Chamber and committees

It is for health boards to plan and deliver clinical services and ensure that they have the correct staff in place to meet the needs of their services and ensure high quality patient care.

The Scottish Government works closely with all boards to support their staff recruitment efforts.

The number of consultant appointments each year is not held centrally. The following table shows the number of whole time equivalent (WTE) consultants in post at the end of each of the last five financial years.

The information shown is for trauma and orthopaedic surgery which is the full name of the general medical council specialty. All consultants working in this specialty have been trained in both trauma and orthopaedics.

The number of consultants with a specialty of trauma and orthopaedic surgery has increased by 19.6 WTE, or 8.8 per cent since 2012.

Table 1. Number (WTE) of consultants with a specialty of trauma and orthopaedic surgery.

	March 2012	March 2013	March 2014	March 2015	March 2016
Whole time equivalent (WTE)	222.6	216.3	219.5	224.7	242.2
Increase in WTE (from previous year)	4.6	-6.2	3.2	5.2	17.6
% increase in WTE (from previous year)	2.1%	-2.8%	1.5%	2.3%	7.8%

Source: Scottish Workforce Information Standard System.

Notes

Data is as at 31 March each year.

Between September 2015 and December 2015 national waiting times centre had an increase of 8.0 WTE trauma and orthopaedic surgery consultants, these staff were previously miscoded with a specialty of general surgery.

The Scottish Government is currently in detailed discussions with the relevant NHS boards on the range of services each of the centres will provide. The allocation of the £200 million will be made once the range of services has been agreed for each facility.

There are no current plans to require mountain hare bag returns.

Under the auspices of Scotland's Moorland Forum (which represents a range of stakeholders involved in moorland management, including the Scottish Government and Scottish Natural Heritage), it has been agreed that guidance on the management of mountain hare be produced by a selected sub-group of specialists and representatives from relevant interest groups. The inaugural meeting of this sub-group took place on 23 May 2016.

The sub-group will produce and publish interim best practice guidance in the autumn. This interim guidance will be updated after the anticipated publication (in 2017) of the findings from a study being undertaken by the James Hutton Institute, the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust and Scottish Natural Heritage into the most appropriate methods of assessing mountain hare numbers.

The outputs of the study will be used to standardise the method of estimating mountain hare density in conjunction with the promotion of more cooperative working between estates, thus facilitating better informed decisions on sustainable hare management at regional scale.

The position statement issued by Scottish Natural Heritage, the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, and Scottish Land and Estates sets out a number of different recommendations relating to the management of mountain hares in Scotland. There are no formal arrangements for monitoring the extent to which the recommendations are being followed.

The decision to relocate the Edinburgh Museum of Fire is a matter for the Board of the Scottish fire and Rescue Service (SFRS)

The museum is currently housed within the SFRS property at Lauriston Place, Edinburgh. This building is listed at category A, and as such the local planning authority, in this case City of Edinburgh Council, must give special regard to the character of the listed building if proposals for change of use or alterations are being considered. The decision to grant or refuse planning permission and listed building consent is for the local authority in the first instance, although Historic Environment Scotland are a statutory consultee for applications which impact upon historic environment assets.

Although SFRS intend that the building at Lauriston will be sold, the Museum of Fire would not be lost to the city with the contents being retained, protected and relocated in a new site elsewhere and that SFRS would seek to improve the accessibility of the collection to increase the level of patronage.

The Scottish Government achieves 99% landfill avoidance. On average, 57% of the waste produced in our buildings is segregated for recycling on-site, further sorting then takes place off-site all of which helps us to achieve the 99%. We are working closely with our partners, such as Zero Waste Scotland, and through our network of environmental champions to increase our on-site recycling. We keep our waste management processes under constant review.

Information on the proportion of waste that is currently presented for collection and collected in this manner is not held centrally. It is for each local authority or operator to determine the most effective and efficient way of collecting waste, although the introduction of the Household Recycling Charter and the associated Code of Practice aims to bring more consistency in the approach to recycling.

The Waste (Scotland) Regulations 2012 allow the requirements relating to the separate collection of dry recyclables to be departed from if the amount and quality of recycled material arising from the collected material is not significantly less than it would have been had it been collected separately.

The targets set in the Zero Waste Plan of 70% recycling and 5% maximum of all waste to landfill by 2025 remain in place. I am confident that the measures we already have in place and those we are in the process of implementing will allow us to meet those targets by that date.