Seòmar agus comataidhean

Advice Direct Scotland is one of our delivery partners for the Fuel Insecurity Fund, which also provides advice services. The Fuel Insecurity Fund, however, is focused on the provision of direct support to households, which is overwhelmingly provided in financial form i.e. fuel vouchers or direct payments to energy suppliers.

In many cases the individuals receiving support will have been referred on from an advice service which has already advised them. In other cases some energy advice may be provided in the course of issuing direct support, or the individual may be referred on to a separate advisory or advocacy service.

Organisations supported by the Scottish Government to provide advice services, such as Home Energy Scotland, are financed via separate funding streams.

In general, the data received from Police Scotland for producing the National Statistics on Recorded Crime, is a simple count of the number of crimes and offences which the police have recorded and cleared up. As such we are unable to separately identify back to 1999 which recorded crimes of fraud were committed online.

However we recently introduced a new chapter within the National Statistics, which estimates the volume of recorded cyber-crime in Scotland based on a sample of police records. Under this approach, the number of recorded frauds which involved the use of cyber technology in any way (including cyber-enabled or cyber-dependent crimes) was 2,690 in 2018-19 (the first year of available data) and 3,450 in 2019-20. It then increased significantly to 8,580 in 2020-21, before falling slightly to 8,010 in 2021-22. At least part of the increase in 2020-21 may be due to the significant impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and government instructions to limit social contact. For example in their ‘ Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2021 ’ release, the Office for National Statistics noted that an increase in fraud and computer misuse offences could reflect perpetrators taking advantage of behavioural changes during the pandemic, such as increased online shopping.

Further information on the new chapter referenced above is available as part of Recorded Crime in Scotland, 2021-2022 in particular Table A11. Figures for 2022-23 will be published in June.

Community bodies receive support to request an asset transfer under Part 5 of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 from a range of sources. The Scottish Government provides support for community bodies by funding the Community Ownership Support Service (COSS), who support community based groups in Scotland take a stake in or ownership of previously publicly owned land or buildings.

Since 2017 COSS have worked with 688 community bodies considering their options for taking on land or buildings including by asset transfer. COSS has supported 92 asset transfers and have a further 380 ongoing cases. They also provide advice to relevant authorities on all aspects of the asset transfer process and their adviser led service is free to access.

From the most recent annual data available since the Act came into force on 23 January 2017 to 31 March 2022, community bodies have made 352 asset transfer applications.

The Scottish Government does not hold the full level of information requested for reasons outlined in our answer to your recent question S6W-15113 on 7 March 2023. We do know that our delivery partner the Fuel Bank Foundation has found that in the current financial year, around four in every ten applications have come from households which include at least one child under the age of 16, or if in education, under 18.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The Single Building assessment process has started for the 27 buildings in the original pilot. The pilot has been extended to 105 building. As the programme continues we expect further buildings to be identified and assessed. As we survey and undertake these further assessments we will have clearer information on the time-frame for the completion of all surveys on buildings with potentially unsafe cladding.

In response to the report, the Scottish Government established a Health and Social Care in Prisons Programme to address structural barriers to better health and social care in prisons across a number of areas. The Programme was unavoidably disrupted due to the Covid-19 pandemic but nevertheless managed to make a range of improvements including refreshing the National Prison Care Network. This Network has established strong links with healthcare staff in prisons and is delivering improvements around a number of priority areas such as mental health, substance use, and workforce. Other key achievements from the Programme include:

• publishing a suite of externally commissioned prison population health and social care needs assessments;
• developing a prisons health information dashboard through Public Health Scotland;
• completing a review of clinical IT in prisons; and
• carrying out six tests of change which modelled ways of delivering integrated health and social care in prisons.

Much of this work continues to inform ongoing improvements to health and social care in prisons.

We are considering workforce as one of the key pillars in our new cancer strategy, which we anticipate will be published in spring this year. The cancer strategy will align with the Health and Social Care: National Workforce Strategy, published in 2022.

A public consultation was held early on in the process of developing the new strategy, which included engagement with professionals working in cancer services.

Scottish Government does not hold this data. Anyone not registered with a GP and resident in temporary accommodation, can be treated as a temporary patient at a General Practice for the first 3 months, maintaining access to healthcare. After this time they are able to register as a patient. Accommodation type does not affect eligibility to access Primary Medical Care.

The information requested on how many people have been employed in cancer diagnostic and treatment services in each NHS board in each year since 1999 is not held by the Scottish Government. Healthcare professionals involved in diagnostics and treatment are not always exclusively dedicated to one disease group such as cancer.

Information on staff in post from 2012 onwards, broken down by NHS Board, can be found on the TURAS NHS Education for Scotland workforce statistics site at: NHSScotland workforce | Turas Data Intelligence

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all people living with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) in Scotland are able to access the best possible care and support, and benefit from healthcare services that are safe, effective and put people at the centre of their care.