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I have asked Angiolina Foster, Chief Executive of Communities Scotland to respond. Her response is as follows:

Ministers have given a commitment to approve 18,000 new and improved homes for social rent and low cost home ownership in the three years up to 2006. The principal mechanism for funding this new affordable housing is the Scottish Executive Housing Investment Programme. The number of new and improved homes for social rent and low-cost home ownership approved with funding from CommunitiesScotland which were completed in the financial years 2001-02 and 2003-04 are asfollows.

	Social Rent	Low Cost Home Ownership
2001-02	4,629	1,550
2002-03	4,008	1,060
2003-04	3,654	500

 

The number of completions in an individual year is largely determined by the nature of the projects approved for construction in previous years. Large or complex housing projects, especially when linked to wider regeneration initiatives, will take over a year to be completed and in some instances, there is a time-lag in the recording of this data and these figures can therefore be subject to revision.

The following table gives the available information.

Houses Built or Improved for Social Rent or Low Cost Home Ownership by Year of Completion

	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04
Built by local authorities	65	94	0
Funded by Scottish Executive – Housing Investment Programme
Housing Association – Rent	4,570	3,839	3,596
Other – Rent	59	169	58
Total for rent	4,629	4,008	3,654
Housing Association - Low Cost Home Ownership	245	213	152
GRO Grants for Owner Occupation to Private Developers	1,253	794	284
Grants to Individuals	52	53	64
Total for ownership	1,550	1,060	500
Total for local authorities and Scottish Executive – Housing Investment Programme
Total for rent and ownership	6,244	5,162	4,154
Of which:-
New building	5,640	4,682	3,749
Rehabilitation	604	480	405

The Executive is committed to ensuring that all the people of Scotland can access the services they need when and where they need them. GPs, pharmacists, dentists, nurses and other therapists are now providing more services as close to home as possible. For many services where previously patients were required to visit hospital treatment is now available in local communities. Where people need to attend hospital for treatment, we have guaranteed maximum waiting times for in-patients and a new guarantee for outpatients comes into force at the end of next year.

We already encourage local authoritiesto promote environmentally-sensitive practices. For example, we provide assistancethrough the Strategic Waste Fund to promote recycling, waste minimisation and thediversion of waste from landfill. Charging schemes can have a role to play but eachproposal would need to be considered on its merits and subject to thorough appraisal.

The expenditure on additions to IT fixed assets by NHSScotlad in the year ended 31 March 2003 was £14 million. This represents 9% of the total gross capital expenditure by NHSScotland for that year. The Scottish Executive does not collect information on the revenue expenditure on ICT by NHSScotland.

The Executive is committed to providing a national supporting infrastructure to enable more effective delivery of knowledge support tailored to NHS needs in the local context. Responsibility for implementation rests with NHS Education Scotland.

NHS Education Scotland’s national strategy for NHS Scotland Knowledge Services, Exploiting the Power of Knowledge in NHS Scotland: a national strategy, sets out a three year plan for development of the system-wide infrastructure for NHS library and knowledge services. This strategy aims to empower and equip NHS staff with the knowledge they need to meet the challenges of workforce change and development, service modernisation, and implementation of the e-Health programme.

The primary vehicle for delivery of the knowledge management strategy is the NHS Scotland e-Library http://www.elib.scot.nhs.uk , which already offers access to the knowledge base, in the form of journals, books, databases, guidelines and alerting services for the full range of NHS Scotland staff, across all staff groups and geographic locations. Approximately 40,000 NHS Scotland staff have registered to use the e-Library since January 2003, and usage continues to increase.

The Staff Governance standard incorporated into the NHS Reform Act requires that staff be appropriately trained. Local NHS systems are required to have in place training and development plans for the whole system, and also Personal Development Plans for each individual employee. The necessary resources, including time and funding, should then be put in place and allocated to ensure that local training and development needs are met.

The performance of each NHS system in respect of their compliance with the Staff Governance Standard is assessed by auditors annually and included in the Accountability Review Process to be chaired by the Minister for Health and Community Care.

The Scottish Executive has not carried out any such research and currently there are no plans to do so.

It is for health boards to set the levels of spend on ICT in support of health board eHealth strategies. Central funds are used for national systems such as the national screening and child health systems and generally in support of the national eHealth Strategy. Decisions about future years spend have yet to be made but any increases will seek to obtain benefits such as improvements in clinical decision support, patient safety, patient involvement and time taken to exchange information.

The Scottish Executive has no plans of this nature which are related to any changes in staffing to acute services. There are, however, a number of initiatives which are underway or planned which will improve information available to patients. Work is underway to make corporately available information accessible to all, including patients. Work is also being done to ensure that such information is shared across health board boundaries through ICT. We are exploring through the e-Health project how NHS 24 and others may expand online services.  NHS Education for Scotland continues to support ICT and library services within the NHS.

There are no plans to specifically increase funds for library services. Funding for library services is met from NHS boards’ unified budgets. Decisions on final budgets for future years have yet to be taken.