Chamber and committees

The following table gives the available information.

Houses Built or Improved for Social Rent or Low Cost Home Ownership by Year of Completion

	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04
Built by local authorities	65	94	0
Funded by Scottish Executive – Housing Investment Programme
Housing Association – Rent	4,570	3,839	3,596
Other – Rent	59	169	58
Total for rent	4,629	4,008	3,654
Housing Association - Low Cost Home Ownership	245	213	152
GRO Grants for Owner Occupation to Private Developers	1,253	794	284
Grants to Individuals	52	53	64
Total for ownership	1,550	1,060	500
Total for local authorities and Scottish Executive – Housing Investment Programme
Total for rent and ownership	6,244	5,162	4,154
Of which:-
New building	5,640	4,682	3,749
Rehabilitation	604	480	405

We already encourage local authoritiesto promote environmentally-sensitive practices. For example, we provide assistancethrough the Strategic Waste Fund to promote recycling, waste minimisation and thediversion of waste from landfill. Charging schemes can have a role to play but eachproposal would need to be considered on its merits and subject to thorough appraisal.

The expenditure on additions to IT fixed assets by NHSScotlad in the year ended 31 March 2003 was £14 million. This represents 9% of the total gross capital expenditure by NHSScotland for that year. The Scottish Executive does not collect information on the revenue expenditure on ICT by NHSScotland.

The Executive is committed to providing a national supporting infrastructure to enable more effective delivery of knowledge support tailored to NHS needs in the local context. Responsibility for implementation rests with NHS Education Scotland.

NHS Education Scotland’s national strategy for NHS Scotland Knowledge Services, Exploiting the Power of Knowledge in NHS Scotland: a national strategy, sets out a three year plan for development of the system-wide infrastructure for NHS library and knowledge services. This strategy aims to empower and equip NHS staff with the knowledge they need to meet the challenges of workforce change and development, service modernisation, and implementation of the e-Health programme.

The primary vehicle for delivery of the knowledge management strategy is the NHS Scotland e-Library http://www.elib.scot.nhs.uk , which already offers access to the knowledge base, in the form of journals, books, databases, guidelines and alerting services for the full range of NHS Scotland staff, across all staff groups and geographic locations. Approximately 40,000 NHS Scotland staff have registered to use the e-Library since January 2003, and usage continues to increase.

The Staff Governance standard incorporated into the NHS Reform Act requires that staff be appropriately trained. Local NHS systems are required to have in place training and development plans for the whole system, and also Personal Development Plans for each individual employee. The necessary resources, including time and funding, should then be put in place and allocated to ensure that local training and development needs are met.

The performance of each NHS system in respect of their compliance with the Staff Governance Standard is assessed by auditors annually and included in the Accountability Review Process to be chaired by the Minister for Health and Community Care.

The Scottish Executive has not carried out any such research and currently there are no plans to do so.

It is for health boards to set the levels of spend on ICT in support of health board eHealth strategies. Central funds are used for national systems such as the national screening and child health systems and generally in support of the national eHealth Strategy. Decisions about future years spend have yet to be made but any increases will seek to obtain benefits such as improvements in clinical decision support, patient safety, patient involvement and time taken to exchange information.

The Scottish Executive has no plans of this nature which are related to any changes in staffing to acute services. There are, however, a number of initiatives which are underway or planned which will improve information available to patients. Work is underway to make corporately available information accessible to all, including patients. Work is also being done to ensure that such information is shared across health board boundaries through ICT. We are exploring through the e-Health project how NHS 24 and others may expand online services.  NHS Education for Scotland continues to support ICT and library services within the NHS.

There are no plans to specifically increase funds for library services. Funding for library services is met from NHS boards’ unified budgets. Decisions on final budgets for future years have yet to be taken.

The Scottish Executive does not collect the amount spent by NHSScotland on library services and so cannot provide the information that you request.

The Scottish Executive has taken a number of steps to ensure that even stronger action is taken against those who commit environmental crime.

In February 2004 the Lord Advocate announced the establishment of a national network of 17 specialist environmental prosecutors (COPFS Press Release NRCO191HH “Special Prosecutors for Crimes against Environment” on 9 February 2004). This will ensure that prosecutors with expertise in environmentallaw are available throughout the country and will enhance the robust approach toits enforcement. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency is also considering methods by which courts can be made more aware of the impact and severity of environmental crimes

From 28 October 2004 the Anti‑Social Behaviour (Scotland) Act 2004 will doublethe maximum fine, in summary proceedings, for a number of pollution offences, including polluting water or sewerage systems, fly-tipping, landfilling offences and operating industrial plant in an environmentally inappropriate manner, from £20,000 to £40,000. It also provides for fines to be accompanied by prison sentences in some cases, and for fixed penalty fines for litter and fly-tipping.

The Nature Conservation (Scotland) Act 2004 raises the maximum penalty for conservation‑related offences, such as damage to Sites of Special Scientific Interest, to £40,000 on summary conviction. The Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003, and the Nature Conservation (Scotland) Act 2004 provide for custodial sentences of up to six months for those convicted of the most serious of offences, and fines of up to £5,000 for each offence.

In addition to the above, work is currently underway on the Partnership Agreement commitment to consider the establishment of environmental courts.