Chamber and committees

Our systems already guard against this. Purchasing or owning a home in Scotland does not in itself qualify an applicant for eligibility for regulated fee status and student support. An applicant must demonstrate that they meet all the relevant residency criteria which includes being ordinarily resident in Scotland.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally. I will ask the Chief Executive of Skills Development Scotland to respond to you.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally. I will ask the Chief Executive of Skills Development Scotland to respond to you.

The Scottish Government allocates funding to Skills Development Scotland (SDS) on an annual basis for delivery of national training programmes, including Get Ready for Work and Lifeskills. It is up to SDS to determine how to allocate this funding between the different programmes.

I refer the member to the answers to questions S4W-03768 on 16 November 2011 and S4W-03769 and S4W-03770 on 15 November 2011. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

The Chief Medical Officer and Chief Nursing Officer For Scotland will be writing out shortly to health professionals to raise awareness of the risks associated with Carbon Monoxide and ask for increased vigilance of the signs and symptoms of exposure in their patients.

The Health Protection Agency Health and Safety Executive (HSE) will once again be supporting the UK wide Carbon Monoxide Awareness week, commencing 21 November, by issuing press releases with supporting safety advice. Their web-sites contain useful information for householders and landlords on Carbon Monoxide safety. In addition Health Protection Scotland produced a Carbon Monoxide fact sheet which can be viewed at:

http://www.hps.scot.nhs.uk/enviro/nonhpspublicationsdetail.aspx?id=39585.

Institutions of higher education must satisfy themselves of the accuracy and veracity of the residency claimed by an applicant in order to assess eligibility for regulated fee status. This can include, but is not limited to, confirming the address of the school attended by the applicant, the address registered with UCAS, the address to which any child benefit with respect to the applicant is registered and the address of the parental home.

Where supported fees are concerned, the Student Awards Agency for Scotland (SAAS) must agree with an institutions assessment that a student has ‘home’ status before such fees are paid.

Information on childcare vouchers for employers is available on HMRC’s website. There have been no specific steps to raise awareness of childcare vouchers among voluntary and private sector employers in Scotland since the January-June 2009 project to do so. However, information is available to voluntary and private sector employees on the Scottish Childcare Information Service website and the Scottish Government website, as well as HMRC’s website.

Private and social landlords are not required to fit homes with carbon monoxide detectors but they are required to ensure that gas heating systems are regularly inspected and are not dangerous.

The Accounts Commission is now completing a plan for delivering a review of how Community Planning Partnerships are externally scrutinised including pilot work which will be carried out in 2012. Further information on detail and timings for the review will be announced in due course.

Based on local authorities’ own financial returns to the Scottish Government, they have estimated that 18 per cent of their net revenue income in 2011-12 will be raised from the council tax. This figure includes both anticipated council tax benefit funding and any community charge arrears expected to be collected in-year, but excludes the £70 million per annum the Scottish Government has provided to local authorities to compensate them for the income foregone in freezing the council tax at 2007-08 levels.