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Officials are in regular contact with the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council to keep them advised of future requirements for teachers and further discussions with all relevant interests will take place in the course of the summer and autumn.

Local authorities are responsible for the range of music tuition opportunities they plan to make available to pupils. They have been asked to address the need to offer a diverse spread of provision as a condition of the additional funding being made available to meet the above target.

We have committed more than £63 million over the next three years to support education authorities in rolling out the integrated community schools approach to all schools in their areas. Authorities and their partner agencies are also expected to make a financial commitment from their mainstream budgets and from other sources of funding available to them.We are monitoring the progress of roll-out through reports submitted annually by authorities to the Scottish Executive. Multi-disciplinary teams led by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Schools are carrying out reviews of integrated community school clusters, and arrangements are being made for a national evaluation of the roll-out programme to start later this year.

We now plan to issue the revised guidance this summer.

The appeals system for national qualifications is a matter for the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA). However, I have been given assurances that the SQA has not introduced a cap or quota on the number of appeals that can be submitted.

The Physical Education Review Group met most recently on 23 and 30 April 2003, when they spent two days working on the recommendations for their report. The group will meet again in the near future to finalise these recommendations. The report is expected to be published in the autumn of 2003. The Memorandum on Entry Requirements to Courses of Teacher Education in Scotland is reviewed and updated annually. The 2003 edition, outlining entry requirements for student intakes in autumn 2004, will be published shortly. Specific guidance, superseding that contained in the memorandum, can be issued to teacher education institutions if necessary.

Planning permission for the residential and sporting developments at Meggetland playing fields was granted on 30 May.

Sportscotland withdrew their objections to the planning application for the development at Meggetland in 2001.

The timing of any submission of a planning application to the Scottish ministers is for the relevant local authority. Any submission during an election period would be handled in accordance with the election guidance for Scottish Executive staff. The guidance makes clear that ministers should only be invited to take decisions on issues during an election period where it is absolutely essential. Consequently, ministers were not asked to decide on any planning applications during April although officials continued to deal with certain routine cases under delegated authority.

I understand that this question arises from concerns that landfill sites in the Fauldhouse area might adversely affect the health of the local communities. Research aimed specifically at identifying landfill-related public health effects has provided no compelling evidence that such a link exists. Additionally, in March 2003, the Information and Statistics Division (ISD) of the Common Services Agency responded to an enquiry from a research specialist at the Scottish Parliament's Reference Centre on cancer incidence in this area. The ISD compared incidence rates for various cancers in Fauldhouse with those in Lothian and in the whole of Scotland and found no significant differences. Therefore, the Scottish Executive has no plans to extend the comprehensive health surveillance systems that currently operate in Scotland to provide a more detailed analysis for this specific locality.