Seòmar agus comataidhean

The quarterly update on action 15 was published at 09:00 on 11 March 2020.

The provision of surveillance at each of Highlands and Islands Airports Limited’s (HIAL) Air Traffic Control airports is crucial to the delivery of modern, efficient and environmentally sound Air Traffic Services in the Highlands and Islands, where safe operation is key. HIAL will be undertaking a procurement exercise to fully inform the market of the requirement and press for innovative solutions from suppliers. Following the completion of the tender exercise, the number of radar heads and costs will be known.

It should be noted that, as identified in the ‘HIAL ATM2030 Technical Scoping Study’ by Helios, any change to the current method of Air Traffic Control operation will lead to an increase in operational costs.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-25939 on 24 October 2019. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

The Interventions for Vulnerable Youth service transferred to Kibble Education and Care Centre in October 2019. Funding remains in place for the delivery of the current service until 1 April 2020.

The Scottish Government value this important preventative service which supports some of our most vulnerable young people in Scotland. We are in discussions with Kibble regarding funding proposals from April and will continue our consideration around longer term, whole-system support for vulnerable children and young people in Scotland.

The Stones of Stenness was chosen as the location of one of the three initial pilots for the Rural Tourism Infrastructure Fund, with £80,000 awarded in March 2018 to Orkney Islands Council for that purpose. Work by the Council on delivering much needed car parking facilities at one of Orkney's top Neolithic sites is ongoing.

Orkney Islands Council has not received funding through either of the first two rounds of the main fund administered by VisitScotland but it will be open to the local authority to apply to the third round.

The Scottish Government's Rural Tourism Infrastructure Fund, administered by VisitScotland, is investing £9 million in much-needed infrastructure across rural Scotland. £6 million has already been awarded over the first two rounds. Recognising both the success of, and the need for the fund, we made a further commitment within our current Programme for Government for an additional £3 million of funding to invest in new projects in 2020-21. The process for this third round of funding is still active and the deadline for application is 10 July 2020. Orkney Islands Council, as with other Local Authorities, are being encouraged to apply for funding where their projects meet the fund's criteria.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W–27559 on 24 February 2020. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

The data gap initially arose due to technological difficulties when the Scottish Government server was upgraded in 2014. Scottish Government analysts agreed with the Scottish Prison Service that SPS would provide public information on the prison population regularly to fill the gap in provision.

SPS use an management information system, PR2, in their day-to-day operations. They publish aggregate statistics on the population annually, providing key information on the age, gender and legal status of the population on their website. The information available in these aggregate statistics is limited to the attributes defined when it was instituted, and as a result is not as flexible as the previous system.

SPS also provide a weekly snapshot from PR2, giving the most up-to-date version of similar information, on their website.

The Scottish Government recently pre-announced the publication of statistics on the prison population in May 2020. This collection is a derived longitudinal dataset, constructed from available legacy information on PR2. It does not rely on the daily snapshots from which the previous Official Statistics source was built. This publication will include a range of information not previously available, including detailed age groups, equalities group characteristics, and durations in residence for the prison population.

There had been a temporary delay to publishing weekly figures based on live and aggregated management information due to temporary resourcing issues at the SPS, however this has now been addressed and weekly publication has resumed and is up-to-date.

In addition, the Scottish Government recently pre-announced the publication of statistics on the prison population in May 2020. This will include more detailed information about the characteristics, legal statuses and offences of prisoners, which are not available through the weekly or annual digests produced by SPS.

Justice Analytical Services (JAS) has been working closely with the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) to deliver a shared approach for the dissemination of statistical information collected by their prisoner management information system, PR2.

Following a meeting between JAS and SPS on Thursday, 13th February 2020, a plan to develop and improve the statistical information published about prisons in Scotland has been agreed. A number of key operational indicators are under consideration for scheduled publication by SPS. This list will be agreed as standardised statistical processes and quality assurance protocols are mainstreamed, beginning with improved regular bulletins on deaths in custody.

A detailed longitudinal dataset is in development by JAS. The publication of these statistics has been pre-announced for May 2020 and will include demographic, geographic and equalities characteristics for prisoners in Scotland.