Chamber and committees

Local Authorities have powers under Section 13 of the Roads (Scotland) Act 1984 to require, by notice, that frontagers of a private road make the road up to, and maintain it at, such reasonable standards as may be specified in the notice. However, following upgrading, the local authority need not adopt the road unless requested to do so by a majority of the frontagers.

Some 1,300 council houses in North Ayrshire were insulated in 1999-2000 through the Warm Deal grant allocated to the Council by the Executive. For this financial year, the council has total resources of some £6 million for capital investment in its own housing stock. It is for the council to decide how best to deploy these resources to meet housing need in North Ayrshire, including tackling dampness and condensation.

There are no grants available from the Scottish Executive to local authorities to upgrade unadopted residential roads.

These questions were answered on 27 April.

The Scottish Executive is not investigating Developing North Ayrshire.

The Scottish Executive is not currently investigating Developing North Ayrshire.

A condition of all PPP projects is that they should be able to demonstrate value for money. Consequently, the Scottish Executive's funding of £5 million from the 1998 Transport Challenge Fund towards the cost of the Larkhall to Milngavie Rail route and the level playing field support of up to £2.26 million per annum, for which the project may be eligible as part of the PPP arrangements, depends upon value for money being demonstrated satisfactorily in the full business case for the project which the Strathclyde Passenger Transport Authority is still preparing.

As I explained to the European Committee on Tuesday 4 April, I am concerned about the position of a number of voluntary organisations sponsoring European Social Fund projects who were facing a gap in funding between the closure of previous structural fund programmes and the introduction of new ones. I have therefore put in place a guarantee in relation to the funding gap for these organisations to enable them to plan effectively for the new programme and I have asked officials to bring forward as a matter of urgency recommendations as to how such a scheme should work.

Developing North Ayrshire received £418,336 of European Grant in the financial year 1999-2000.

The projected cost for the refurbishment of St Andrew's House is £20 million, in line with the original estimate for this work.

Most of the major systems in the building date from the 1930s. They no longer meet modern standards and major remedial work was required to allow continued use of the building for the long term.

A survey of the building prepared by independent consultants in 1994 suggested that a full refurbishment undertaken then would have cost £23 million. Consideration was given in 1998 to lesser and alternative refurbishment packages costing £13.2 million and £20 million. The less extensive of these covered essential repairs to the fabric of the building, removal of asbestos and a range of IT and electrical works. The additional work undertaken for the larger alternative, which has proceeded, includes a replacement of the windows, with consequential energy savings, and the range of construction works necessary to create a substantial amount of open plan space. This will lead to running cost savings once refurbishment is complete.