Chamber and committees

Electronic monitoring does not have a direct effect on an offender's housing entitlement. The court is required to request a social work assessment of the suitability of the place of restriction and information as to the attitude of persons likely to be affected by the enforced presence of the offender. If the social work assessment shows that the offender does not have accommodation, it is likely that the court will consider imposing a different sentence.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-26348.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-26348.

Adult neurosurgical services are currently provided at four centres in Scotland: Grampian University Hospital NHS Trust, Tayside University Hospitals NHS Trust, Lothian University Hospitals NHS Trust and the Institute of Neurological Sciences, South Glasgow University Hospitals NHS Trust. Paediatric neurosurgery is provided at these four centres and at Yorkhill NHS Trust.

The information requested is shown for financial years April 1997 to March 2001.Number of Patients Resident Outside the Greater Glasgow NHS Board Area Treated as an In-Patient or Daycase within the Board Area, April 1997 to March 2001.

	1997-98	1998-99	1999-2000	2000-01
Number of patients1,2,3	38,439	38,862	37,534	37,576

Notes:1. These statistics are derived from data collected on discharges from non-obstetric and non-psychiatric hospitals (SMR01) in Scotland.2. Probability matching methods have been used to link together individual SMR01 hospital discharges for each patient, thereby creating "linked" patient histories. Hence, if a patient has multiple hospital discharges in a year, they are counted once in the figure for that year.3. Figures exclude health board of residence "Unknown" or "No Fixed Abode".

The West of Scotland Chief Executives Group is currently considering a proposal for the regional planning and funding of neurosciences.

Draft guidance dealing with the right to buy changes contained in the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 - including the provisions pertaining to pressured areas - was issued for consultation in December 2001. Twenty-six responses from interested bodies were received by the end of the consultation period in March. These have been considered and we hope to issue the final guidance in July.

Further education students must meet the residency criteria set out in the Further Education Bursaries (Scotland) Direction 1997 before further education colleges can consider them for course support. This support consists of maintenance and travel and study allowances along with the further education additional funds i.e. young students retention fund, hardship funds and childcare. All funding is allocated on a discretionary basis and is means tested. The student can undertake any course which is eligible for recurrent funding from the Scottish Further Education Funding Council and is for non-advanced education leading to a qualification.In terms of funding support to colleges, changes introduced by the Scottish Executive last autumn further strengthened ministerial commitment to provision of English language classes for new members of the community from overseas.

I have asked Mr Bob Millar, Chief Executive of Communities Scotland to respond. His response is as follows:Consistent with the priority to be given to the provision of affordable rented housing, planned expenditure by Communities Scotland in 2002-03 on new and improved housing will increase year on year by £4.231 million to £183.575 million in 2002-03.

The Commission on the Private Rented Sector was set up by Shelter and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation as an independent body to look at issues in respect of the private rented sector. The commission's remit did not extend to Scotland and the Scottish Executive did not provide any evidence to it. However, the Housing Improvement Task Force is currently looking at some of the issues that the commission has made recommendations on and the commissions report has been made available to the members of the task force sub-group working on the private rented sector.