Chamber and committees

No.

All Scottish Executive funding for sport is channelled through sportscotland, the national agency for sport in Scotland. Over the last five years, sportscotland has invested exchequer and National Lottery funds as set out in the following table , to stimulate the development of sport in local communities. There are aspects of other sportscotland programmes which support local initiatives. For example, sports governing body funding frequently includes an element for coaching but it is not possible to define the split between work at local or national levels.

	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05
Sports Facilities – School and Community Strand	7,567,891	6,003,336	2,101,225	1,256,619	0*
Sports Facilities – Local Facilities Strand	1,134,451	2,598,492	2,891,400	2,286,562	0*
Sports Facilities – Swimming Pool Upgrade Strand		1,675,029	2,566,502	3,509,253	0*
Building for Sport – Community Facility Strand					2,629,644

 

	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05
Awards for All	766,440	1,256,798	1,000,000	1,000,000	1,000,000
School Sport Co-ordinator Programme	550,739	796,024	2,510,635	2,222,994#	0#
Active Primary Schools		1,200,000	1,100,000	1,800,000	0#
Active Schools					9,800,000
TOP programme	1,240,250	1,556,460	160,533	101,127	47,120
Social Inclusion Partnership Programme			1,327,954	653,489	709,687
Sportsmatch	256,786	265,777	181,844	215,662	247,973
Total	11,516,557	15,351,916	13,840,093	13,045,706	14,434,424

Note: *The Sports Facilities Programme was reviewed during 2003 and subsequently replaced by the Building for Sport Programme in May 2004. The decline in Lottery income resulted in a reduction in the number of awards, both in terms of the amount offered, and as a percentage of the total project cost. The Building for Sport Programme has two strands: community facilities and training and competition facilities.

The School Sport Co-ordinator and Active Primary Schools programmes were incorporated into Active Schools in April 2004.

Further details of each of these programmes can be obtained from sportscotland’s website or from sportscotland.

The Scottish Executive has supported the development of a wide variety of local initiatives working with partners including Paths to Health, Jogscotland, SUSTRANS and YDance. Funding for these initiatives is summarised below:

	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05
Funding Amount (£)	-	-	50,000	516,238	898,976

 

During the period 2000-05, the Scottish Executive has provided additional funding to local authorities. The £95 million released in June 2002 as a result of a budget revision and End-Year Flexibility arrangements, was made available for work on two key areas:

Improving the quality of life for children and young people; in particular for making healthy choices an easier option by improving access to sport and leisure activities; and

For improving the local environment, with particular action on local streets and roads, on crime and community safety and on environmental improvements.

Further additional “quality of life” funding was announced in December 2002 which provided an additional £180 million over three years.

While each local authority has different needs and priorities it was open to them to use any of this additional funding for leisure and recreational purposes.

The national strategy for sport in Scotland, which is owned by all the key agencies and partners in sport including the Scottish Executive, is set out in Sport 21 2003-07. Several of the targets contained in Sport 21 focus on developing participation in sport and we are committed to working with key partners and agencies in progressing their delivery. At community level the delivery of Sport 21 targets largely rests with local authorities in line with their statutory responsibilities. Sportscotland, the national agency for sport in Scotland, is working closely with local authorities to support the implementation of the strategies developed to support the delivery of these Sport 21 targets.

The Executive continues to promote Scottish architecture through its policy on architecture. A progress report which details both the achievements of policy to date and our future plans was published in February 2005, a copy of which is available in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 35568). Recent initiatives have included events promoting Scottish architecture abroad in Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and France.

The establishment of Architecture and Design Scotland in April 2005 as a national champion for good architecture and design represents a major step forward in encouraging and promoting quality development in the built environment across Scotland. In 2006 we plan a formal review of policy which will take into consideration the Cultural Commission's recent recommendations on architecture and the built environment.

The funding directly allocated to activities in support of the policy on architecture in each of the last five years is as follows:

Financial Year	Funding
2001-02	£612,215
2002-03	£948,496
2003-04	£1,113,524
2004-0	£1,131,677
2005-06 (planned)	£1,447,500

 

We are seeking to ensure that every child in Scotland has access to services that support them in being physically active. Services should be at a level that children can meet the minimum activity required for health. The Executive has invested £24 million in Active Schools and more than 600 Active School Co-ordinators have already been recruited. The co-ordinators have developed programmes of high-quality opportunities to enable children to participate in regular, frequent, safe and fun activities incorporating physical activity, sport, play and active travel.

In response to the PE Review Group report published on 14 June 2004, the Minister for Education and Young People outlined a 10-point action plan aimed at providing more time for physical education, more teachers of physical education and more choice in physical education. The Scottish Executive Education Department are working with Learning and Teaching Scotland, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education (HMIE) and other stakeholders to take this forward.

For children of pre-school age, physical development and movement is one of the five key aspects of A Curriculum Framework for Children 3 to 5. This underpins the provision of pre-school education and providers are required to provide opportunities for physical activity both indoors and outdoors. In addition the National Care Standards for Early Education and Childcare up to the age of 16 include a requirement for children and young people to have the opportunity for energetic physical play. Quality in pre-school education and child care is ensured through inspection by HMIE and the Care Commission.

The Scottish Executive has introduced a range of strategies to encourage physical activity, sport and the use of Scotland’s natural features, such as the National Physical Activity Strategy, our policy on Active Schools and the Healthy Living Campaign.

As part of Scotland’s National Physical Activity Strategy, the Paths to Health programme supports over 90 local schemes to promote walking in communities across Scotland. The recent release of the Walkwise magazine, which is partly funded through the Healthyliving Campaign, compliments this by highlighting scenic countryside routes and providing local environmental information.

We also want more people to experience the far reaching benefits of physical activity in the outdoors, and see opportunities for outdoor education for young people as an important means of encouraging that. LTS has been commissioned to undertake a development programme to raise the profile of outdoor education. Through a Development Officer, we will work to promote better opportunities for young people to engage with Scotland’s outdoors at an early stage and develop lifelong interest.

There are three national surveillancetools used to monitor physical activity levels in Scotland. Theseare: the Scottish Health Survey which monitors overall levels of physical activityin Scotland among adults; the Health Education Population Survey which monitorschanges in knowledge, attitudes, motivation and action among adults around physicalactivity, and the Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children, a World Health Organisationcross-national collaborative study which compares Scottish children at ages 11,13 and 15 to children of the same age in other countries.

Targets within the National Strategyfor Sport, Sport 21, which relate to physical activity, will be measuredthrough the Scottish Health Survey, the Scottish Opinion Survey and data compiledfrom schools by education authorities.

The UK Delegation to UNESCO contributed£50,000 to the UNESCO Fund of the Global Alliance to assist with thedevelopment of the Creative Cities network in December 2004.

Such a body would cost a minimumof £2.1 million per year to run, but that figure is based solely on the currentannual costs of the complaints handling functions of the Scottish Legal ServicesOmbudsman and the Law Society of Scotland.

It would also be necessary totake into account (a) the opportunity cost of time at present given voluntarilyor for notional reward by members of professional bodies; (b) indirect costs relatingto complaints handling currently met by the professional bodies (c) start up costssuch as those relating to recruitment; and (d) economies of scale realised by merginginto a single office for legal complaints the complaints handling functions of theprofessional bodies and the Ombudsman. The annual cost of remuneration for the boardwould depend on its size and composition (an issue raised in the current consultation)but would be at least £0.1 million a year.