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This information is not held centrally. This is a matter for Skills Development Scotland and NHS Boards.

‘A Fairer Scotland for All: An Anti-Racist Employment Strategy was published on 9 December 2022 and sets out the actions the Scottish Government will take and how it will work with employers to help make Scotland’s workplaces more diverse, fair and inclusive.

The strategy will support NHS and other employers to:

• improve their collection of workforce data, including reporting their pay gap, and take action on the findings
• take an anti-racist approach to remove barriers in their recruitment, retention and progression practices to improve representation of workers
• drive cultural, attitudinal and organisational change through building an understanding of the impact of institutional racism and the processes and practices in an organisation that lead to the unfair treatment of people on the basis of race.’

Equally Safe at Work is an innovative employer accreditation programme developed by Close the Gap, Scotland’s policy advocacy organisation working on women’s labour market equality. It supports employers to improve their employment practice to advance gender equality at work and prevent violence against women.

Public Health Scotland, NHS Ayrshire and Arran, NHS Dumfries and Galloway and Healthcare Improvement Scotland are taking part in this pilot which commenced in July 2022 and will take approximately one year to complete. A further five Health Boards, NHS Borders, NHS Shetland, NHS Orkney, National Education Scotland and NHS Fife, are part of the shadow group.

In March 2022 the Scottish Government published The National Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care in Scotland. This Strategy sets out a framework to shape our health and social care which includes Allied Health Professionals and Healthcare Scientists, over the next decade, placing training, wellbeing, job satisfaction and Fair Work at its heart. As part of the Strategy’s work, the Scottish Government has undertaken an AHP Workforce and Education Policy Review and a Healthcare Science Baseline Education Review.

The Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) are taking steps to introduce Flying Finish across NHS Boards, to benefit the workforce and the service. Work has already taken place to put in place a national Retire & Return policy within the NHS.

On 30 August 2022 the Interim National Arrangements on Retire & Return was announced, which offers a process that supports retiring employees to return to employment in their health board on a part time basis, should they wish to do so. The process enables retiring employees to continue employment that is suitable to them and the service, taking a person-centred approach which supports and manages the retirement in a tailored and individual way.

The question relates to a live planning application, and remains subject to consideration by the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park Authority at this time.

As a statutory consultee in the planning process, with a responsibility for the safe and efficient flow of traffic on the A82 trunk road, Transport Scotland was consulted on the second Flamingo Land's Lomond Banks planning application in May 2022.

In terms of national planning policy requirements when considering the potential transport impacts of the proposed development, Scottish Planning Policy, (2014) remains in force until such time as National Planning Framework 4 is adopted and published. SPP contains no requirement to consider potential carbon impacts on Scottish Government climate and vehicle reductions targets.

Transport Scotland did however undertake a comprehensive review of the applicant’s transportation assessment supporting the planning application. Transport Scotland was satisfied that the proposed development could be adequately served by, and connected to, active travel and public transport networks and would not therefore be wholly reliant on car travel.

The outcome from the review informed Transport Scotland’s formal consultation response to the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park Authority.

The Scottish Government has had no discussions with the UK Government regarding any poor customer service processes and response times at the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. No businesses have raised any concerns with the Scottish Government on this matter.

The Scottish Government see good accessible workforce data as a key tool for effective future planning within the Primary Healthcare Workforce. We have a number of ways in which we do this.

In General Practice, Public Health Scotland published workforce planning data through the General Practice Workforce Survey in November 2022 that gives us access to the latest General Practice workforce wte data, this is followed by the General Practice Workforce and Population Survey that gives us accurate headcount data across General Practice, published most recently in December 2022.

Workforce data on general dental practitioners is published by NES biannually, the latest data was published in December 2022.

The Centre for Sustainable Delivery intends to publish a report on workforce planning for the eyecare workforce by end March 2023.

Reporting arrangements are in place to monitor progress of Health and Social Care Partnerships against their Primary Care Improvement Plans (PCIPs). This includes progress on establishing Multi-Disciplinary Teams. Further information is provided in our annual statistical publication that published in March 2022.

In November 2022, Public Health Scotland published a report analysing the 2022 survey of the General Practice workforce. This publication is available at General practice workforce survey 2022 - General practice workforce survey - Publications - Public Health Scotland . Following this work in 2022, the Scottish Government has committed to undertaking the workforce survey on an annual basis.

All NHS boards have utilised the funding available to build the infrastructure in their recruitment teams and appoint an international recruitment lead.