Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government utilises a vaccination management tool at the point of vaccination, the data forms used have built in validation to ensure the data entered are accurate. A new vaccination record is transferred to the National Clinical Data Store (NCDS) after 60 minutes. The layers of recording are updated from NCDS to the reporting dashboards, these are refreshed every two hours to ensure accurate recording.

The M8 Woodside Viaducts are essential links in the M8 central Scotland urban motorway, vital for the economy and connectivity of Scotland. Therefore, the repair of the viaducts and removal of restrictions is high priority as Scotland emerges from the Covid-19 restrictions. The viaducts carry 150,000 vehicles per day in normal times, which would be difficult to accommodate by other routes or modes. As a result, there are no engineering or urban planning options currently being considered as an alternative to the structural repair of the viaducts. Two lanes of traffic will be maintained in both directions and we will work with operational partners to maximise traffic flows through the site, managing impacts on the M8 and adjacent local roads.

The Kinlochleven hydro-electric power station was built specifically to power the Kinlochleven Aluminium Smelter. Since the smelter closed in 2000 all the electrical power produced at Kinlochleven has been exported to the national grid and no power is dispatched to the Fort William smelter directly. The Kinlochleven power station has no connection to the Scottish Government’s Lochaber guarantee and the Kinlochleven power generation assets are not included within the Government’s Lochaber security package.

There are arrangements in place to allow travellers to travel without pre-payment of the Managed Quarantine Hotel/Testing Package who are claiming Hardship. The Scottish Government have agreed to accept the costs of Scottish residents on Low Income benefits. The list of agreed benefits is:

• Universal Credit
• Child Tax Credit
• Council Tax Reduction
• Working Tax Credit
• Housing Benefit
• Income Support
• Pension Credit
• Income-based Jobseekers Allowance (JSA)
• Income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)
• Carers Allowance

To manage the volume of vaccination appointments based on available supply we intentionally limited the initial functionality of the Citizen Portal system. The portal can currently be used to reschedule appointments. Unpaid carers and 18-29 year olds can also register online to receive their appointment.

We are exploring ways to allow people to book their own appointments.

Following the publication of the recommendations from the Ministerial Working Group on Mortgage Lending and Cladding, we invited property owners living in buildings where safety concerns had been determined to submit an Expression of Interest in participating in the first phase of the Single Building Assessment. Over 300 Expressions of Interest were submitted. The selection of the buildings to be included in the first phase has been completed and building owners will be notified of the outcome this week.

The Single Building Assessment is a safety assessment on buildings with flatted properties with external wall cladding and will provide us with the clear evidence on the total need for remediation. All flatted properties will be covered; that’s around 770 high-rise buildings and many more at lower heights.

This approach will allow us to identify buildings that are at risk and if there are no problems identified, it will release people from safety and mortgage lending concerns. It will also save homeowners the hundreds of pounds they may otherwise have faced through paying for an individual EWS1. The costs of Single Building Assessment will be met by the Scottish Government.

Once the Single Building Assessment programme has been established we will target remediation at the buildings at most risk.

In the period October to December 2020:

• There were 3,502 eligible referrals for the 62-day standard, an increase of 14.9%.
• There were 5,697 eligible referrals within the 31-day standard, an increase of 14.7% from the previous quarter.

The below tables outline Eligible Referrals broken down by central region.

Eligible referrals for the 31-day standard (rate per 100,000 of population):

Neither the Cabinet Secretary for Health & Social Care, nor Scottish Government officials have engaged with ServiceNow. NHS National Services Scotland are responsible for the development and operational performance of the Service Now platform which is used as part of the overall digital solution for Covid Vaccinations, and it is for NHS National Services Scotland to manage the performance of their suppliers.

Following a delay due to Covid-19, officials are continuing work with Local Authorities to develop both the secondary legislation required to allow them to enforce the National pavement parking prohibition as well as the Parking Standards Guidance which will underpin the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019. Additionally we will need to consult with the public on some areas contained within those secondary legislations and Local Authorities will need around 12 months to undertake an assessment to consider whether they wish to exempt, subject to certain criteria, any areas of pavement from the prohibition.

As such, the majority of the secondary legislation is likely to be in place by 2022. Some aspects however, such as the appeals process for those who wish to appeal a ticket issued for pavement parking, may not be in place until 2023. It is therefore envisaged that local authorities will be in a position to enforce the National pavement parking prohibition by summer 2023.

We are committed to ensuring that all children and young people get the additional support that they need to reach their full learning potential.

We published our joint response to the independently chaired review of implementation of additional support for learning in October 2020. Angela Morgan’s report sets a clear direction in how we can continue to build on progress in this area. The joint action plan sets out the measures we will take to implement her recommendations. The action plan and governance arrangements for this work are available from Additional support for learning: action plan - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .