Chamber and committees

The Young Patients Family Fund is available to families of all young inpatients aged under 18 - no matter their diagnosis. Posters and leaflets to promote the Fund are available in all Health Boards and we continue to work with Health Boards to best ensure families are aware of the Fund.

The Managed Service Network for Children and Young People with Cancer is currently reviewing its web content and has confirmed that it will be signposting to the YPFF in its update.

The Female Genital Mutilation (Protection and Guidance) (Scotland) Act 2020 was passed by the Scottish Parliament on 19 March 2020. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service have provided an update from their live system and confirm that there have been no charges prosecuted under the Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation (Scotland) Act 2005 since that date.

The Scottish Government is taking forward a wide range of support for all bereaved people, including unpaid carers. This comprises our new Mind to Mind website set up in partnership with NHS Inform which includes a dedicated section on grief and bereavement with information and signposting; the Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund which includes a priority for people who are bereaved; funding for the Scottish Partnership for Palliative Care which develops resources and information to support people affected by bereavement, including Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief and End of Life Aid Skills for Everyone (EASE), a course which is available to anyone; and funding for CRUSE who support people affected by bereavement including specialist support to children, young people and their families.

Under the Carers (Scotland) Act, all unpaid carers have the right to a personalised plan to identify what is important to them which may include counselling and emotional support. Future needs for bereavement support can be considered as part of the process and any eligible needs for support must be met.

Local authorities must also have a carer information and advice service, usually delivered via local carer centres, to help unpaid carers access support in their area. This must include information and advice on counselling and bereavement support available to carers. In addition to information and advice services, many local carer centres provide their own counselling and support services which can include bereavement support.

We have invested an additional £20.4m for local carer support in 2022-23 via the local government settlement, bringing total investment in the Carers Act to £88.4m per year.

The Scottish Government has committed to introducing a Human Rights Bill in the 2021-26 Parliamentary session. We will consult formally on proposals in 2023.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of police responses to mental health distress emergency calls.

The Scottish Government have provided funding to the Scottish Flood Forum since 2009 to work with communities to build resilience and to support those affected by flooding.

The Scottish Government also currently funds Adaptation Scotland Programme, a place-based, capacity building programme which provides advice and support to public sector organisations, businesses and communities to adapt to the impact of climate change, assess risks and ensure they are prepared for extreme weather such as storminess and flooding. Adaptation Scotland’s Adaptation Capability Framework is used across the public sector to assist organisations in assessing and developing their adaptation capacity.

In recognition of the importance of reducing flood risk the Scottish Government has provided, since 2008, a total of £42 million a year through the General Capital Grant to local authorities to allow them to invest in flood protection measures. In addition the 2020 Programme for Government committed an additional £150 million over the course of this Parliament for flood risk management actions.

The Scottish Government works closely with Scotland’s network of 12 Local Resilience Partnerships (LRPs) - which bring together emergency services, local authorities, health boards, power companies and other relevant partners - to prepare for and respond should severe weather impact or flooding occur.

Transforming our homes and buildings to be net zero carbon is one of the most important steps we can take to help end Scotland’s contribution to climate change and will require action from all of us.

New homes currently delivered through the Affordable Housing Supply Programme (AHSP) are required to meet Scottish building regulations which set high levels of energy efficiency and the installation of heating systems that produce zero direct emissions at the point of use is encouraged through the AHSP.

We are actively working with the construction and house building sectors to identify and support good practice and to help ensure that new regulations enforced from 2024 are achievable and effective. The Scottish Government is currently seeking views through the New Build Heat Standard (Part II ) consultation , open until 20 October 2022.

We recognise that installer skills for zero emissions heating systems and energy efficiency measures will need to scale up significantly to support the scale of ambition in our heat in buildings strategy.

Since publishing our draft Heat in Buildings Strategy for consultation in February 2021, we have increased our investment in skills and training opportunities within this sector. Over £1.49 million has been invested through our National Transition Training Fund (NTTF), which has supported over 3,350 participants to access courses for heat pump, energy efficiency and retrofit construction skills. NTTF is now complete and the findings from this and other skills programmes will inform the development of a lifetime skills offer. This is one of the key skilled workforce commitments set out in the National Strategy for Economic Transformation

We have also provided £160,000 capital investment for colleges in the north of Scotland for heat pump and thermal insulation training equipment, with further investment in the South of Scotland colleges provided by the SP Energy Networks Green Economy Fund.

Further initiatives include the Flexible Workforce Development Fund (FWDF), the Heat Pump Skills Grant and MCS Certification Fund.

FWDF provides funding to help employers address priority skills gaps and training needs in their organisations. It provides up to £15,000 of training support to UK Apprenticeship Levy payers, and up to £5,000 is accessible to non-levy paying SMEs. Training can be delivered in partnership with a local college, the Open University in Scotland or through an independent training provider.

The Heat Pump Skills Grant is delivered in partnership between the Energy Saving Trust and Energy Skills Partnership and has supported 10 colleges across Scotland in providing additional heat pump training to their plumbing and heating apprentices.

The MCS Certification Fund is offered to assist Scottish SMEs installing heat pumps in achieving MCS certification for the first time. This funding is for installers who are not currently MCS certified for heat pumps and who want to become MCS certified for any heat pump technology (air, water, or ground source).

A wide range of training opportunities for individuals, including heating related courses, are also available through the Individual Training Account scheme. The Scheme offers unemployed individuals or those on a low income, aged 16 and over, up to £200 per year to help them develop skills to enter into or progress in jobs within key sectors.

We recognise the need to continue our support for skills and training in this sector. We will shortly publish a new Supply Chains Delivery Plan, setting out a broad system of support for businesses working in the energy efficiency and zero emissions heating retrofit sector.

Follow-up scans are agreed on a local basis. Women over 71 who have a history of breast cancer have the option to self-refer for screening.

However, with the development of the Scottish Cancer Network we are working towards the development of clinical management pathways, with breast cancer being one of the first three in development. The Scottish Cancer Network is a dedicated national resource to support and facilitate a ‘Once for Scotland’ approach to cancer services, which will assist in enabling equitable access to care and treatment across Scotland.

The Landlord Register came into effect following the Antisocial Behaviour Act 2004, with associated monitoring information available from 2007. Local authorities are responsible for the administration and enforcement of landlord registration, and are the data controllers of the information on the landlord registration IT system for landlords in their area. The Scottish Government receives monthly aggregate information extracted from the system, including on the total number of active registrations and the number of properties that these relate to, which are set out in the tables below for each of the years in which these figures are available between 2007 and 2022. However the Landlord Registration System is an administrative system used primarily to manage the registration of landlords and rental properties, and has not been designed to produce robust statistical figures on the sector. The figures presented should therefore be considered in the context of data quality issues which include impacts from changes to IT systems over time, a risk of duplicated data and double counting of rental properties in certain instances for joint owners, as well as data issues stemming from any potential lags in the provision of information by landlords on changes to circumstances to existing registrations, and we would advise caution in the use of these figures if making any specific comparisons over time or between local authority areas especially the number of properties within the 2017 – 2019 period which have been subject to significant data quality issues and are not considered to be accurate counts of the number of properties across these years .

associated monitoring information available from 2007 onwards which have been subject to significant data quality issues and are not considered to be accurate counts of the number of properties across these years