Chamber and committees

The Scottish Executive is concerned to develop a joint approach with the DTI between the Scottish construction licensing scheme and the Quality Mark Scheme. Scottish Executive and DTI officials are discussing the options in developing such a joint approach.

Official documents sent to forces, relating to guidelines and legislation, would normally be covered by a letter or circular. As stated in the reply to the earlier question, there is no central monitoring of exchanges between the Executive and police forces and to put such a process in place would be unduly bureaucratic and costly.

A Clinical Resource and Audit Group funded report, on the care of the elderly in long-term care (published in August 2000) examined this issue. The NHS was asked to implement the recommendations flowing from this work in a joint letter from the Chief Nursing Officer and Deputy Chief Medical Officer (18 December 2000). The Scottish Health Plan reminded the service of the need to implement these recommendations. Audit Scotland has initiated a study of hospital catering which reviews the best value of catering services in the NHS in Scotland; this work will also monitor implementation of the CRAG audit and Scottish Diet Action Plan recommendations. The Information Statistics Division of NHS Scotland has developed a system for annual collection of data on nutritional status and longer term monitoring arrangements based on this are under consideration.

DietiCians are nutrition specialists who translate the science of nutrition into practical information about food. They work with people to promote nutritional well-being, prevent food-related problems and treat disease.Information on length of service and the number of dieticians employed by each hospital in Lanarkshire is not available centrally.The following table shows the headcount and whole-time equivalent of dieticians working in Lanarkshire Acute NHS Trust and Lanarkshire Primary Care NHS Trust at 30 September 2001.

	Headcount	WTE
Lanarkshire Acute NHS Trust	25	20.3
Lanarkshire Primary Care NHS Trust	13	10.6

A number of documents, including the Scottish Diet Action Plan and the CRAG-funded audit into the nutrition of elderly people in long-term care, make recommendations relating to the employment of suitably trained staff. Departmental guidance on nutritional care reflects these recommendations. But the main way in which nutritional care will be improved is through the Clinical Standards Board's development of a standard for food and nutritional care. The NHS in Scotland will be expected to meet this standard when published next year.

Data about injury road accidents are collected by the police and reported to the Scottish Executive using the STATS 19 statistical report form. The Executive's statistical database can provide figures on the number of injury accidents by police force area, by local authority area and for specified lengths of individual roads but is not designed to provide statistics for particular towns or villages.

The making and subsequent evaluation of the effectiveness of Traffic Regulation Orders is a matter for the roads authority which promoted them. There are no plans at present to carry out any review.

Information of this nature is an operational matter for the Chief Constable and not held centrally.

Guidance on the procedures for making Traffic Regulation Orders was issued to local authorities and police forces on 4 March 1999. This guidance supplements the Local Authorities' Traffic Order (Procedure) (Scotland) Regulations 1999, which came into force on 1 April 1999.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-27162.