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We are developing our new Palliative and End of Life Care Strategy, which has an overarching aim that everyone in Scotland receives well-coordinated, timely and high-quality palliative care, care around death and bereavement support based on their needs and preferences, including support for families and carers. We want people to receive care where they feel most comfortable. For many, but not all, this will be at home, supported by their family and friends and cared for by primary care teams and care staff.

We have established a number of working groups, including a Children and Young People’s Palliative Care Working Group and a Workforce Education, Training and Resources Working Group. These groups will develop evidence-based recommendations for future service planning, delivery, and improvements in equity of access and continuity of care. They will consider the actions that need to be taken to support the care of children and young people in their own homes, where appropriate. This includes determining what additional training and support community nursing teams may need to enable this.

An underlying principle of the new National Strategy for Palliative and End of Life Care for Scotland will be equitable and timely access to general and specialist palliative care as needed by each person of any age, living with any illnesses, in all places.

As part of this work we are reviewing the information and evidence we have, and need, to develop the strategy. This includes gathering data on current and projected needs for palliative care at a population level, mapping services and support across Scotland, and building on our understanding of people’s experiences of palliative and end of life care.

The outputs of this work will give us a clearer picture of the delivery and accessibility of palliative care across Scotland, including in remote rural and island communities, and will allow us to develop evidence-based actions to ensure that people have equitable access to general and specialist palliative care if and when they need it, regardless of where they live.

The Scottish Government is currently developing the new Palliative and End of Life Care Strategy for Scotland and intends to publish this in 2024.

We have appointed a National Clinical Lead for Palliative and End of Life Care to drive the development and delivery of the strategy, supported by a Clinical and Practice Advisory Group and a wide-reaching Strategy Steering Group (SSG).

The SSG is currently reviewing the information and evidence we have and need to develop the strategy, including current and projected data on palliative care needs, mapping services and support across Scotland, and engaging with patients, families and the wider public to understand their awareness and experiences of palliative and end of life care.

The SSG will discuss the timeline for producing a draft strategy for consultation, informed by this evidence gathering, at their next meeting in September.

The following table shows the average (median) and longest continuous time (expressed in days) spent on remand before transition to the sentenced population or departure, in 2020-21 and 2021-22. Data for 2022-23 is not yet available.

Table 1: Average (median) and Longest (Maximum) Number of Days Spent of Remand

The intention is that fares policy will be reviewed through the Fair Fares Review and Islands Connectivity Plan. Decisions will be taken on implementation in due course.

Some work had commenced with the commercial operator to consider potential options to put in place a compliant RET scheme, although this work has not progressed as quickly as we would have hoped due to other priorities in supporting ferry services.

Applying RET fares on Scottish Government funded services to the Northern Isles routes has previously been considered as potential high risk of distorting the Pentland Firth market and open to challenge. Further discussion and agreement with commercial operators would be required for this to be a viable option.

As of the morning of 1 August 2023 there were 2,275 people on remand. The following table shows the average (median) and longest (maximum) continuous time (expressed in days) spent on remand, by ethnic grouping.

The start date of this collection imposes an upper limit on the continuous time to date spent on remand of 1,225 days. Less than five individuals were at that limit, held under the Extradition Act 2003 (S8).

The spending on RET is not recorded separately. Since the start of new Clyde & Hebrides Ferry Service contract in 2016, Transport Scotland pays CalMac Ferries Limited, as the operator, a monthly grant payment which covers costs to operate the network as a whole. This is not broken down by individual routes. Previous evaluations have suggested that RET fares save users around £25m per year compared to pre-RET fares.

Transport Scotland is considering future ferry fares policy as part of the Islands Connectivity Plan alongside our wider Fair Fares Review, which will report by the end of 2023 and recommend a package of measures which can be considered for implementation from 2024-25 and onwards to address the wider issues of cost and availability across all modes of public transport.

Meantime, we are continuing to take action on ferry fares with fares on the Northern Isles and Clyde & Hebrides ferry networks to remain frozen until the end of March 2024.

Any introduction of new RET measures on lifeline ferry services in Scotland would now need to comply with the requirements of the Subsidy Control Act 2022 and there have been extensive discussions on the Subsidy Control Act 2022 but no separate specific discussions on RET with the UK Government.

The capital funding provided by the Scottish Government to individual local authorities is included in the Local Government Finance Circulars.

Local government finance circulars - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Local authorities in Scotland also have a statutory power to borrow for their own capital expenditure and a duty to determine and keep under review the maximum amount which it can afford to allocate to capital spending.

Capital spending by local authority is included in the Scottish Local Government Finance Statistics (SLGFS). SLGFS is an annual publication that provides a comprehensive overview of financial activity of Scottish local authorities based on authorities audited accounts.

Local government finance statistics - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

Home Energy Scotland (HES) Grant and Loan Scheme

The following table sets out the number of households who have received funding through the HES Grant and Loan Scheme (formerly HES Loan and Cashback Scheme) for solar PV/energy storage systems where not installed with a certified renewable heating or energy efficiency measure. These figures include instances where solar PV/energy storage systems have been installed alongside an existing renewable heating system.