Chamber and committees

NHS boards and local partners are asked to plan capacity and demand levels for this winter, including a review of activity levels and improvements in patient flow. boards were asked to consider trends over the last three to five years and to take variation in demand into account. Boards also have business continuity and contingency arrangements to deal with greater demands and disruptions. The Scottish Government is committed to supporting NHS boards.

All territorial NHS boards, NHS 24, NHS National Services Scotland and the Scottish Ambulance Service lodged their winter plans with the Scottish Government during October and November 2016, as set out in the following table. NHS boards and Health and Social Care Partnerships keep these plans under review throughout the winter period.

The Scottish Government has encouraged the public to use NHS 24 during the winter months by supporting NHS 24's annual winter health 'Be Healthwise This Winter Campaign', launched this year by Shona Robison, Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing on 25 November 2016. This multi-media campaign highlights to the public the importance of looking after their own and their families' health, taking a few simple steps in preparation for winter.

The campaign, which runs from end November to early January, focuses on the delivery of phased messaging around key themes, using advertising and PR to remind people to:

Stock up on over the counter medicines

Check any repeat prescriptions and order only what is needed, picking up in plenty of time before the festive break

Know your GP and local pharmacist opening hours over the festive holidays.

Our £100m cancer strategy ‘Beating Cancer: Ambition and Action’ includes a commitment to invest up to £5 million over the next 5 years in new activity targeted to improve outcomes by addressing health inequalities, including in screening.

In addition our Detect Cancer Early programme, which has seen investment of £41m since 2012 focuses on reducing inequalities and has seen a significant increase of 16.3% in stage I diagnoses in the most deprived areas of Scotland. This includes a 44.1% increase in stage I lung cancer diagnoses in people from the most deprived areas

The Family and Childcare Trust's publication shows that the average weekly cost of residential care in Scotland is broadly in line with the UK average, taking into account the difference in average house prices.

Furthermore, around 10,000 self-funders in residential care in Scotland receive free personal care payments of £171 per week.

Scotland is well known for its changeable weather, and we need to be resilient all year, not just in Winter. The Ready for Winter Campaign which ran in 2015 to raise awareness of the risks from all kinds of severe weather cost £155,000. This is just one part of the work we do to build resilience into every aspect of life in Scotland, throughout the year.

Transport Scotland have confirmed that their total spend on winter maintenance service during 2015-16 was £12.9m.

Scotland is well known for its changeable weather conditions the cost of dealing with these conditions can vary depending on the severity of the weather experienced. The Scottish Government keeps in close contact with the emergency services, Transport Scotland and utility providers to ensure preparations for winter weather are in place well in advance.

As with previous years, we are again running the annual winter preparedness campaign – Ready Scotland, which launched on 7 November at a cost of £110,000. The campaign has a wider, all-year-round message and raises awareness of the risks from all kinds of severe weather, and the simple steps people can take to prepare themselves and their communities. By encouraging people to prepare for the consequences of severe weather, they will be prepared for a whole range of emergency situations.

Transport Scotland expect spend on their winter maintenance service across the four Trunk Road Operating Contracts and the Forth Bridge Operating Contract during the winter of 2016-17 to be broadly similar to the £12.9 million spent during the 2015-16 season.

The estimated number of people employed in the public sector in the Highlands and Islands region, from 2007 to 2015, sourced from the Annual Population Survey (Jan-Dec) is shown in the following table:

Number of people employed in the public sector in the Highland and Islands Regions, 2007 to 2015

Source: Annual Population Survey, ONS (Jan-Dec in each year)

Notes:

1. Information has been sourced from the Annual Population Survey, ONS (Office for National Statistics) obtained from www.nomisweb.co.uk

2. Highlands and Islands geographic area has been defined based on the Highland and Islands NUTS 2010 Level 2 geographic area.

3. Estimates are based on the survey respondents self-report of working in the public sector. This is not entirely consistent with classification based on an ONS National Accounts definition.

The preferred source of public sector employment for Scotland is the Scottish Government’s National Statistics Publication Quarterly Public Sector Employment in Scotland. The latest information is for Q2 2016 located at:

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Labour-Market/PublicSectorEmployment

This source is based on administrative records collected through the Scottish Government and the Office for National Statistics survey of individual public sector bodies (based on National Accounts Definitions). This publication does not provide estimates for number of people employed in the public sector in the Highlands and Islands region, however information on local government employment by council area is provided in Web-Table 9: Local Government by Local Authority.

The Town Centre First Principle agreed by the Scottish cabinet and all Council Leaders asks that all investment decisions consider the impact on the town centre as a starting point. Furthermore, the measures set out in the Town Centre Action Plan set the conditions and support activity across the wider public, private and community sectors to tackle the key issues in town centres across Scotland.

The Scottish Government funds Scotland’s Towns Partnership to support town centre projects and to share and promote learning from activity happening at a local level. Scotland’s Towns Partnership hosts a dedicated Small Towns Scotland group which recognises the unique role, function and pressures of small, island, rural and peripheral towns and ensures that they have a strong voice influencing policy and delivery.

The Scottish Diabetes Survey (2015) shows that in Scotland there are 30,356 people living with Type 1 diabetes, and 250,881 with Type 2.

The Scottish Government does not hold centrally this data broken down by the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) ranking.