Chamber and committees

The information requested is as follows:

(a) Separate tables showing information about the change in percentage use of agency and bank nursing and midwifery staff have been placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 52305 and 52306 respectively).

(b) Trend costs for agency nursing and midwifery staff in each NHS board are available at: http://www.isdscotland.org/isd/servlet/FileBuffer?namedFile=Agency%20Nurse%20200910.xls&pContentDispositionType=attachment.

Trend costs for bank nursing and midwifery staff in each NHS board are available at: http://www.isdscotland.org/isd/servlet/FileBuffer?namedFile=Bank%20Nurses%20200910.xls&pContentDispositionType=attachment.

The number of new council houses started and completed in each financial year since 1996-97 is published by local authority area on the Housing Statistics for Scotland pages of the Scottish Government''s website at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Housing-Regeneration/HSfS/NewBuildLA.

With regard to council houses planned by each local authority, the Affordable Housing Securing Planning Consent Survey collects data from planning authorities on planning applications that have been granted consent. Table 1 shows how many new council houses were granted consent in each financial year from 2005-06, the earliest date for which these data are available.

As there is no comprehensive mechanism for monitoring planning applications, it is possible that some applications that should be recorded in the survey are not recorded at the time they are received. They may be recorded in subsequent years.

Table 1: Units Consented For Local Authority Rent, by Planning Authority Area

	Units Consented for Local Authority Rent1,2,3
	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08	2008-09	2009-10	Total
Aberdeen City	33	0	0	0	0	33
Aberdeenshire	0	4	0	4	23	31
Angus	0	0	0	0	0	0
Argyll and Bute	0	0	0	0	0	0
Cairngorms4	-	-	-	-	-	-
Clackmannanshire	0	0	0	0	0	0
Dumfries and Galloway	0	0	0	0	0	0
Dundee City	0	0	0	0	21	21
East Ayrshire	0	0	0	0	10	10
East Dunbartonshire	0	0	0	0	0	0
East Lothian	0	22	38	126	152	338
East Renfrewshire	0	0	0	0	0	0
Edinburgh, City of	0	0	0	0	107	107
Eilean Siar	0	0	0	0	0	0
Falkirk	0	4	3	0	62	69
Fife	0	0	0	0	0	0
Glasgow City	0	0	0	0	0	0
Highland	0	0	0	0	0	0
Inverclyde	0	0	0	0	0	0
Loch Lomond and the Trossachs	0	0	0	0	0	0
Midlothian	0	262	132	242	218	854
Moray	0	0	0	0	0	0
North Ayrshire	0	0	0	0	27	27
North Lanarkshire	0	0	0	20	0	20
Orkney Islands	0	0	0	0	0	0
Perth and Kinross	0	0	0	0	10	10
Renfrewshire	0	0	0	0	0	0
Scottish Borders	0	0	0	0	0	0
Shetland Islands	10	6	0	2	16	34
South Ayrshire	0	0	0	0	0	0
South Lanarkshire	0	0	0	0	0	0
Stirling	0	0	0	10	0	10
West Dunbartonshire	0	0	0	0	0	0
West Lothian	0	0	0	0	0	0
Scotland	43	298	173	404	646	1,564

Notes:

1.  Source: Affordable Housing Securing Planning Consent Survey 2009-10.

2. Numbers of units in this table are for housing units intended for use as rental properties by local authorities. The majority of these contributions (84%) are funded entirely by the public (or voluntary) sector. Most of the remaining 16% are from contributions of land, or sales of built units by developers at a price which allows this type of provision to occur.

3. Units receiving consent are not guaranteed to be/have been built.

4. Cairngorms developments have been recorded by overlapping authorities.

The Scottish Government does not hold the amount allocated broken down by each local authority except for the funding given to Youthlink Scotland, which is broken down in this way for each year. The following table sets out the amounts administered by Youthlink Scotland since 2007 within each local authority. However, as from 1 April 2011 we will be collecting this information from all CashBack partners, which will allow allocations to be shown by each local authority.

To date the Scottish Government has committed to invest £24 million in the CashBack for Communities programme which includes diversionary and participatory projects for young people across Scotland, and in a wide range of projects.

So far over 300,000 young people participate in CashBack for Communities activities.

Cashback for Communities Youth Work Fund, Summary of Awards by Local Authority in Each Funding Round at 17 January 2011

LA NO	LA	Round 1 Awards Total	Round 2 Awards Total	Round 3 Awards Total	Round 4 Phase 1 Awards Total	LA Total Awards
1	Aberdeen	£24,966.00	£63,525.00	£33,623.00	£47,808.00	£169,922.00
2	Aberdeenshire	£28,620.00	£52,379.56	£56,987.00	£37,576.00	£175,562.56
3	Angus	£7,200.00	£35,800.00	£22,501.00	£8,731.00	£74,232.00
4	Argyll and Bute	£40,000.00	Nil	£21,474.00	£19,880.00	£81,354.00
5	Clackmannanshire	Nil	£40,000.00	£9,721.00	£19,904.00	£69,625.00
6	Dumfries and Galloway	£9,565.00	£51,435.00	£39,662.00	£36,282.00	£136,944.00
7	Dundee	£79,532.00	£42,468.00	£27,405.00	£71,349.00	£220,754.00
8	East Ayrshire	Nil	£82,000.00	£23,059.00	£12,949.00	£118,008.00
9	East Dunbartonshire	£12,692.00	£26,307.86	£19,591.00	Nil	£58,590.86
10	East Lothian	£31,000.00	Nil	£18,983.00	£17,094.00	£67,077.00
11	East Renfrewshire	Nil	£34,301.74	£17,077.00	£15,256.00	£66,634.74
12	Edinburgh	£176,383.00	£43,617.00	£71,185.00	£79,581.00	£370,766.00
13	Falkirk	Nil	£68,975.00	£27,829.00	£18,401.00	£115,205.00
14	Fife	£71,522.00	£113,478.00	£72,928.00	£25,974.00	£283,902.00
15	Glasgow	£103,711.00	£576,259.00	£131,558.00	£70,667.00	£882,195.00
16	Highland	£72,751.00	£11,249.00	£49,854.00	£5,000.00	£138,854.00
17	Inverclyde	£13,659.00	£69,341.00	£15,739.00	£15,041.00	£113,780.00
18	Midlothian	£8,132.00	£24,867.00	£15,438.00	£22,471.00	£70,908.00
19	Moray	£22,146.00	£4,854.00	£18,941.00	£11,000.00	£56,941.00
20	North Ayrshire	£4,057.00	£89,870.95	£28,215.00	£29,410.00	£151,552.95
21	North Lanarkshire	£224,000.00	Nil	£61,468.00	£80,329.00	£365,797.00
22	Orkney Islands	£4,445.00	£5,555.00	£5,296.00	£4,925.00	£20,221.00
23	Perth and Kinross	£30,091.00	£20,867.20	£29,689.00	£15,859.00	£96,506.20
24	Renfrewshire	Nil	£100,000.00	£30,952.00	£21,524.00	£152,476.00
25	Scottish Borders	£30,429.00	£6,571.00	£24,036.00	£15,603.00	£76,639.00
26	Shetland Islands	Nil	£10,000.00	£6,320.00	Nil	£16,320.00
27	South Ayrshire	Nil	£49,999.61	£30,015.00	£24,532.00	£104,546.61
28	South Lanarkshire	£144,698.00	£31,302.00	£58,527.00	£41,459.00	£275,986.00
29	Stirling	Nil	£40,000.00	£14,776.00	£15,390.00	£70,166.00
30	West Dunbartonshire	£42,548.00	£39,452.00	£17,672.00	£9,822.00	£109,494.00
31	West Lothian	£12,600.00	£58,388.37	£42,624.00	£32,477.00	£146,089.37
32	Western Isles	£4,920.00	£5,080.00	£7,284.00	£7,284.00	£24,568.00
>	Round Totals	£1,199,667.00	£1,797,943.29	£1,050,429.00	£833,578.00	£4,881,617.29

 

All 5,492 staff (100%) in the core directorates of the Scottish Government are paid above £7.15 per hour. The minimum rate of pay in the government is currently £7.23 per hour.

The Scottish Living Wage was established in 2009 at £7.00 per hour. The minimum rate of pay of staff in the government in 2009 was set in 2008 as part of a three-year pay award and before the establishment of the Scottish Living Wage. At that time, 95.1% of the 5,591 staff were paid above £7.00 per hour.

Since the Scottish Living Wage was only established in 2009, there are no comparison figures for the years prior to that date.

We believe that access to higher education should be based on the ability to learn and not the ability to pay. We have firmly ruled out the option of charging tuition fees, a position which has been supported by the Parliament.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally. I will ask the Chief Executive of Skills Development Scotland to write to the member with the information requested.

The Scottish Government through sportscotland provides financial and other support to Scottish Rugby to support the development of rugby. In addition, Scottish Rugby was also awarded funding over three years through the Cashback for Communities initiative to provide activities for young people to take part in rugby.

The Cabinet''s summer programme has given local communities a greater opportunity to speak directly to Ministers about important issues of local and national concern. The Scottish Cabinet visited Dornoch, Stirling, Isle of Bute and Kilmarnock. As well as the formal Cabinet meeting, ministers hosted public meetings on the Government''s Vision for Scotland, staged receptions to celebrate Scotland''s Year of Food and Drink, and undertook visits and engagements around each meeting. More than 1,000 people attended events as part of the Cabinet''s summer programme

This year''s summer Cabinet programme follows on from two previous years of successful summer Cabinet events in Dundee, Melrose, Stornoway, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Dumfries, Inverness, Pitlochry and Skye.

Further information on the Cabinet''s summer programme for this and previous years on the Scottish Government website at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/About/cabinets2010.

Asylum support (accommodation and cash support) for asylum seekers is a matter for the UK Border Agency. However, through the Race, Religion and Refugee Integration Funding Stream the Scottish Government has provided £5.6 million for the period 2008-11 to improve the lives of minority ethnic and faith communities in Scotland including refugees and asylum seekers, migrant workers and gypsies/travellers.

No decisions have been made regarding funding post 2011 which will be subject to the spending review.

On 22 September 2010, the Scottish Government laid a draft Order before Parliament that will set annual emissions reduction targets for the years 2010 to 2022. These targets are designed to prescribe an emission trajectory which will achieve the 42% reduction required by 2020.

The Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 requires that the Scottish ministers also publish a Report on Proposals and Policies for meeting these targets. This report will be published together with a Low Carbon Economy Strategy before the end of the year. These documents will follow the publication of the Energy Efficiency Action Plan in October and together will detail the specific measures that the Scottish Government is putting in place to accelerate emissions reduction and provide strategic direction for the public and private sectors.

This work will build on emissions reduction measures that the Scottish Government is already undertaking, including, for example:

The Scottish Government launched the £10 million Saltire Prize and has tripled funding for micro and community generation with £13.5 million available per year.

In 2009-10, we committed £15 million to a new Home Insulation Scheme targeting 100,000 homes in 10 local authority areas. This was increased to £25 million in 2010-11.

Our £27million Climate Challenge Fund has helped around 250 communities reduce their emissions saving around 700,000 tonnes of CO₂, the equivalent of taking 225,000 cars off Scotland''s roads.

The Energy Saving Scotland boiler scrappage scheme supported over 4,600 householders with a £400 grant towards the replacement of a working G-rated boiler (for over 60s, this did not need to be in working order) with an energy efficient model certified under the Energy Saving Trust recommended scheme.

With regard to measuring progress, the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 includes extensive provision for monitoring and reporting on progress towards achieving Scotland''s climate change targets (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Environment/climatechange/scotlands-action/climatechangeact/targets). This includes a requirement that for each year in the period 2010-50, ministers provide Parliament with a report on annual targets, no later than October 31 in the second year after the target year, when emissions figures become available in the Disaggregated Greenhouse Gas Inventory for Scotland. In recognition of the time-lag associated with these figures, the Act also requires that the Scottish ministers publish an assessment of the impact on emissions of budget proposals. The first of these carbon assessments was published in September 2009. To ensure external scrutiny, from 2011 ministers must request that the expert Committee on Climate Change report annually setting out its views on progress towards Scottish emissions reduction targets. Ministers are also required to publish a response to this report.

More information about the Scottish Government''s action on climate change is available online at the following address:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Environment/climatechange.