Chamber and committees

a) The Tollcross site under United Biscuits ownership engaged with Scottish Enterprise (SE) in late 2013, to help the site through a three year £7.2m modernisation plan to transform the company’s operating performance and improve overall efficiency. An SE Training grant of £808,000, and advisory support from the Scottish Manufacturing Advisory Service (SMAS), were provided to support the Tollcross site and its employees. The business was acquired by Yildiz Holding in November 2014, with the last stage of SE’s modernisation support still ongoing.

SE support of £193,000 was granted to Pladis (owned by Yildiz Holding) in October 2016 to help attract a significant manufacturing project to the Tollcross site and create new jobs. SE funding supported technical expertise, staff training and innovations required to develop the product for the UK market. SE is continuing to engage with the company under current owner Pladis to support the Tollcross site in the workforce development area.

b) Support for United Biscuits was offered through the Scottish Government’s initiative for responding to redundancy situations, Partnership Action for Continuing Employment (PACE), in 2011 and then in 2015 (by which time the company was owned by Yildiz Holding but retained the trading name United Biscuits).

• 2011 - PACE representatives delivered a capacity building presentation to HR staff and unions on 17-6-2011.

• 2015 - PACE information was shared with staff who were taking voluntary redundancy, as there were no compulsory redundancies, and they were advised to contact PACE for further help, if required.

On both occasions, PACE representatives met with the company and outlined the support they could give to those at risk of being made redundant. The company decided not to proceed with the support offered through PACE, however, and used an alternative service instead.

There has been no PACE support provided to Pladis.

The Scottish Planning Policy states that that “Local development plans should allocate appropriate sites to support the creation of sustainable mixed communities and successful places and help to ensure the continued delivery of new housing.” As the statutory housing authority, councils have a requirement to prepare a Local Housing Strategy which among other things should consider the housing requirements of all equality groups and undertake an Equality Impact Assessment as per the Equality Act 2010. Within the Race Equality Framework 2016-30, there is a goal that "minority ethnic people have fair and proportionate influence on community planning”.

Scotland has an impressive set of high quality public sector data and internationally significant informatics research. Collective data agreements, use of questions in core surveys, and combined data sets are helping to provide a broader range of data for ethnic groups. In addition, the Scottish Government has recently engaged with stakeholders on a new Equality Evidence Strategy, which sets out equality evidence gaps, including on ethnicity. This strategy will be published in Summer 2017 and the Scottish Government will work with partner organisations to further develop the equality evidence base over the next four years.

This suite of data and research is used to inform Equality Impact Assessments (EQIAs) which consider the impact of new or revised policies, practices or services against the requirements of the public sector equality duty. The duty requires all Scottish public authorities to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations. It covers people in respect of all aspects of equality (age, disability, sex, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, gender reassignment and pregnancy and maternity). Good quality evidence helps to ensure the needs of all people are taken into account during the development and implementation of a new policy or service, or when a change is made to a current policy or service.

More specifically, the Scottish Government ensures it collects sufficient data on accessibility and quality of Schools and Other Educational Institutions, Medical Institutions and Public Transport, and more detail on these areas are as follows:

Schools and Other Educational Institutions

Data on the quality and accessibility of schools and educational institutions is gathered through a number of data sources and much of this analysis can be provided for both urban areas and ethnic groups:

Information on the condition and suitability of (local authority funded) school buildings is collected in the school estates core facts survey which has been carried out annually since 2007;

The number of pupils who have been assessed as having an adaptation requirement and the nature of the adaptation required is collected in the annual pupil census;

Education Scotland inspect and report on the quality of education in a sample of early learning and childcare settings, primary schools, secondary schools, special schools, community learning and development services, colleges, and residential educational provision. These inspections include evaluations of the quality indicator ‘Ensuring wellbeing, equality and inclusion’. Education Scotland also inspect the education functions of local authorities;

The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) collect a wide range of data on accessibility and quality covering Universities and Colleges in Scotland. Information is collected and published to meet a range of stakeholder needs;

Medical Institutions

Information Services Division of NHS (ISD) publishes a six-monthly update on recording of ethnic group in hospital admission and hospital outpatient data.

Public Transport

Data on the quality of public transport is gathered from the Scottish Household Survey (SHS) which asks users about their views on buses and trains on a number of dimensions. The SHS also collects information on the accessibility to several public services, including public transport. This data is collected for minority ethnic groups and is available split by urban /rural geography. Other sources of information on the quality of public transport are user satisfaction surveys that are run regularly.

Educational institutions are supported to develop effective engagement with partners and stakeholders, including communities, through the Education Scotland quality frameworks ‘How Good is Our School’ (HGIOS), ‘How Good is Our College’ (HGIOC) and ‘How Good is Our Early Learning and Childcare’ (HGIOELC).

Funding notionally received from the UK Government’s Apprenticeship Levy through the block grant is not additional money, and largely replaces funding the Scottish Government would have previously received. Taking account of public bodies' contributions to the Levy, public sector spending leeway in Scotland will be reduced by around £30 million. Unlike the UK Government, we consulted extensively on how to respond to the Levy. In December I published details of how we will budget for apprenticeship and other employability and training opportunities, in a manner entirely consistent with the findings of our consultation.