Chamber and committees

a) NHS Staffing

In all areas of NHS Scotland, a great deal of effort is going into ensuring that services have sufficient capacity to deal with COVID-19, manage other risks and resume planned services as safely and effectively as possible. Although NHS Scotland’s staffing levels are at a record high, following nine years of consecutive growth, we are fully aware of the difficult circumstances that Boards and frontline staff are working in. That is why we have announced a record £300 million of new investment in measures to help services deal with system pressures over winter.

Measures we are taking as part of this investment include the recruitment of 1,000 additional healthcare support staff to support patients in hospitals and in community health teams, as well as £4.5 million of funding to attract registered nurses to Scotland. This activity is supplemented by an additional £1 million to enhance Boards’ capacity for recruitment.

Decisions on local staffing requirements and recruitment are the responsibility of individual NHS Boards. However, Scottish Government officials are continually engaging with NHS Boards to identify particular areas of concern.

(b) Social Care Staffing

The Scottish Government launched a national recruitment campaign on 8 November to attract more people to the social care sector. This campaign emphasises the value of a career within social care by showcasing the benefits of the sector beyond pay, and towards the extrinsic and intrinsic rewards of the role.

Officials are working at pace with SSSC and other key sector partners to develop a national induction programme to support new entrants into Adult Social Care; to promote career opportunities and deliver policies on fair work, upskilling and developing the workforce. This commitment is crucial to improving the experience of the social care workforce and addressing long standing recruitment issues in the sector.

As a result of lobbying efforts from the Scottish Government, the Home Office have temporarily extended the Shortage Occupation List for EU workers. Social care workers, care assistants and home care workers are to become eligible for a health and care visa for a 12-month period.

The Scottish Government will continue to push for a migration system tailored to Scotland’s needs, including a Scottish Visa, and work with partners and employers to develop proposals that suit their requirements.

(c) Public Transport Staffing

For bus service staffing, Transport Scotland and Scottish Government Officials are continuing to work closely with bus service sector representatives and other partners to help facilitate solutions to the staffing pressures brought by the COVID-19 pandemic compounded by the consequences of EU Exit. This has included work to help connect local employability partnerships with bus service operators as well as ensuring that the sector is represented in the Labour and Skills Shortages Action Plan process.

For rail service staffing, due to an increase in COVID-related absences and subsequent disruption in December, ScotRail has put a temporary timetable in place to provide a more stable and reliable service. ScotRail staff COVID-related cancellations have now reduced significantly following the successful introduction of a reduced timetable on 4 January. Around 8% of services have been withdrawn in this temporary timetable – largely additional peak services – leaving a more reliable core timetable in place. It is planned to retain the revised timetable until the end of the month, but ScotRail will keep this under review to balance staffing resources and demand from passengers as best as possible.

Transport Scotland has engaged with Transport for Edinburgh and Strathclyde Passenger Transport to try to understand the potential impacts of the introduction of the national free bus scheme on their operations. This work will help to develop a baseline evaluation of the new Scheme, which will be reviewed after its first full year of operation.

There are separate local concessionary schemes run by local authorities or Regional Transport Partnerships that cover other modes of transport. Any decision to extend concessions to these modes rests with them.

The Scottish Government is also working with CoSLA and the Association of Transport Co-ordinating Officers (ATCO) to quantify the overall effects of the introduction of the scheme on wider Local Authority budgets.

It is for Abellio up to 31 March and the new operator ScotRail Trains Ltd from 1 April 2022, to decide what rolling stock it runs and this needs to deliver the required timetable performance and provide capacity to meet changing demand levels. Transport Scotland continues to monitor the capacity provided through the current service operation contract.

Since November 2021, a mix of class 43 HSTs (4 + 5-cars) and class 170 (3-cars) trains has been running between Edinburgh and Aberdeen. From time to time it has been necessary to substitute other types of trains for the planned HSTs due to a variety of operational reasons, including absence due to Covid of the staff trained to operate HSTs.

Details of the grant allocations and outturns for each council as part of our Area Based Schemes programme since 2013 are published on the Scottish Government website:

Home Energy Efficiency Programmes for Scotland: area-based schemes - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Information about the previous Home Insulation Scheme (HIS) and the Universal Home Insulation Scheme (UHIS) from 2008 to 2013 is available from the Energy Saving Trust website.

Home+Energy+Programmes+Summary+Report+20092013.pdf (energysavingtrust.org.uk)

That information is not held centrally. Local authorities are responsible for the provision of local waste services and are, therefore, best placed to comment on contractual arrangements for waste services.

We have no plans to include future designation of any new national parks as a national development in the forthcoming National Planning Framework 4. A draft was laid in Parliament on 10 November 2021 and a public consultation is also running alongside parliamentary scrutiny.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-05521 on 24 January 2022. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The National Parks (Scotland) Act 2000 defines the conditions which the Scottish Ministers must be satisfied or may be satisfied before an area may be proposed for designation as a National park. Under Section 2(2) of the Act the Conditions are:

a. that the area is of outstanding national importance because of its natural heritage or the combination of its natural and cultural heritage,

b. that the area has a distinctive character and a coherent identity, and

c. that designating the area as a National Park would meet the special needs of the area and would be the best means of ensuring that the National Park aims are collectively achieved in relation to the area in a co-ordinated way.

Scottish Government is open minded as to the size of the areas which are put forward as candidate areas for National Park status. Reference to ‘smaller in scale’ in the Bute House Agreement was to dispel any perception that areas nominated would need to be of the same scale as the two existing National Parks.

COSLA recommended that a “non-legally committed” scheme is defined, for this purpose, as a scheme that has not been notified under schedule 2 of the Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Act 2009. This did not mean that current contracts should be immediately stopped but they should be paused at an appropriate time, where practicable, for example when a key project milestone is reached. Local authorities should not begin the notification process for Cycle 1 schemes if they have not already done so.