Seòmar agus comataidhean

The research laid out in the Mental Health Foundation’s report, ‘Thriving Learners: Initial Findings from Scottish Colleges' together with the Initial Findings from Scottish HEIs, published in November 2021, will inform the Student Mental Health Plan. This Plan is being taken forward by the Student Mental Health and Wellbeing Working Group, and will be published in Spring 2023. The Plan will be shaped by a range of research, evidence and good practice, including the publications mentioned above as well as the NUS Scotland Think Positive Initiative and good practice examples of collaboration between the sector and NHS Scotland on referral pathways.

The Plan will also be aligned with a range of recently published Scottish Government strategies such as the Government’s Suicide Prevention Strategy – ‘Creating Hope Together’, the emerging Self Harm Strategy and the wider Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy.

We do not keep historic records of insolvencies which have impacted on the affordable housing supply programme.

We expect around 400,000 people to receive our Winter Heating Payment each year, more than double the 185,000 people who on average have received Cold Weather Payments over the last 7 years.

The latest Scottish Government Private Sector Rent Statistics, Scotland, 2010 to 2022 was published on 29 th November 2022, which presents average private rents by property size and Broad Rental Market Areas between 2010 and 2022 (years to end September), based predominantly on advertised rent data. This is the lowest level of granularity available for the Scottish Government Private Rent Statistics. The figures cannot be disaggregated to local authority level as the data collection method used has not been designed for this purpose. and therefore the Scottish Government does not produce or publish rental data at local authority level. In addition, data is not held for the years prior to 2010.

In terms of average rents in the social rented sector, the Scottish Government Housing Revenue Account (HRA) Statistics publication contains a time series by local authority area (Table 8) of the average weekly rent on local authority HRA properties from 1997-98 onwards. These figures are also included alongside corresponding figures for housing association average rents by local authority area in an archived Scottish Government Housing Statistics publication table , although this table covers the period 2005-06 to 2012-13 only. More recent data on average rents in the social rented sector for local authority and housing association properties, including by property size, is published as part of Scottish Housing Regulator Charter Data outputs for the years 2013-14 onwards, available in the Scottish Housing Regulator Statistical Information webpages . The Charter Data figures are available at a social landlord level only, and so housing association figures are presented as landlord level averages rather than by the local authority location of their housing stock. However separate Scottish Housing Regulator stock data for the latest year 2021-22, available in the same Statistical Information webpages, includes information for on average rents split by both social landlord and local authority area for the year 2021-22.

Details of Parliamentary business, including motions for debate, are published in the Business Bulletin when the Parliament is in session. This includes details of current and future business of the Parliament and the business motion setting out the date for the debate on ‘Improving care and services for people with chronic pain’ was proposed and agreed by MSPs on Tuesday 8 November 2022. This is available to view on the Scottish Parliament website: https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/votes-and-motions/S6M-06687

In advance of this, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care met with the convenors of the Cross Party Group on Chronic Pain (CPGCP) on 7 November 2022 to inform them that the debate was imminent and wrote to them on the 11 November 2022 once the date had been confirmed. We will continue to seek to work in a collaborative and constructive manner with the CPGCP and other stakeholders as we implement the Framework for Pain Management Service Delivery.

There is ongoing work related to identifying and monitoring risks from PFAS.

The environmental regulator SEPA has been working with partners in recent years to understand the sources, environmental concentrations, and risks of perflourinated compounds in the environment.

A 2019 SEPA study looked at the potential for organic contaminants to be present in materials spread to land, and carried out a basic risk assessment using monitoring data for prioritised substances. This study included measurement of 1 PFA substance (PFOA) levels in sludges from two waste water treatment plants, and did not identify a risk for reasonable worst-case spreading scenarios. In 2018, SEPA carried out a limited monitoring exercise looking at several PFAS in a number of rivers across Scotland, though monitoring locations were not directly targeted to potential sources of these chemicals. 65% of the 550 datapoints reported were below limits of detection.

A Scottish Government commissioned report by the James Hutton Institute on the impact of sewage sludge spreading on human health was published in 2021 and indicated that risks to human health from the polyfluorinated compounds PFOS and PFOA in sewage sludge spread to land in Scotland are likely to be low.

However, scientific understanding of risks posed by PFAS in the environment continues to develop. For example :

• SEPA is reviewing its approach to evidence gathering to better characterise the current distribution of PFAS in Scotland’s environment. It is working with partner organisations to develop this understanding, and working across the regulatory landscape to support revisions to legislation, regulatory approaches, and support site operators or users of PFAS based substances to meet their legal obligations. This includes engagement with large research programmes such as ECORISC (Ecotoxicological Risk Assessment Towards Sustainable Chemical Use).
• UK environmental regulators have been engaged in the UK Water Industry Research Chemical Investigations Programme (CIP UK). Through this programme SEPA has been working in partnership with Scottish Water on various workstreams for a number of years, and this investigation has included evaluation of PFAS in waste water treatment works effluent and sludge, risks to the environment and effectiveness of treatment processes.

The Scottish Government accepts that this statistic needs revising and we have already committed to undertake further work to quantify Scotland’s offshore wind potential. In response to the issues raised in the UK Statistics Authority’s letter, dated 7 December 2022, the Scottish Government has engaged directly with the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) setting out the steps that have been taken to ensure the statistic is not used further, and provided an update on the analytical work that is underway to produce a replacement statistic.

The recording of contractors is not a mandatory field in our applications system and therefore our records are not complete. The Scottish Government Affordable Housing Supply Programme does not formally analyse whether contractors are SME housebuilders or the basis of their involvement.

The Scottish Government published the Framework for Pain Management Service Delivery - Implementation Plan in July 2022.

Extensive engagement of people with lived experience was carried out at all stages to develop the Framework including members of the Cross Party Group on Chronic Pain. This includes through representation on the National Advisory Committee for Chronic Pain (NACCP) and a national survey of people with chronic pain and their carers. We also sought input from other stakeholder groups during the development of the Framework including NHS staff, service planners and third-sector partners. This included work to bring together the diverse clinical disciplines involved in pain management in order to inform and support activities to improve chronic pain services.

All members of the NACCP had the opportunity to freely share their views on the priorities for improving pain management support which were used to inform the development of the draft Framework. Committee members were provided with an advanced copy of the Framework and were encouraged to share their feedback on its content via a public consultation which had a high level of responses from people with chronic pain and other stakeholders. We are grateful for the views and ideas shared through the consultation which have been used to inform the Aims and Actions we have set out in the Plan. This includes actions to address issues raised by the Cross Party Group on Chronic Pain to drive delivery of sustainable services and support for people with chronic pain across Scotland.

Published figures on the most recent and historical numbers of patients that have been admitted to hospital can be found within the within the Annual Acute Activity publication, which was released on 27 September 2022. The publication can be found at the following link:

https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/acute-hospital-activity-and-nhs-beds-information-annual/acute-hospital-activity-and-nhs-beds-information-annual-annual-year-ending-31-march-2022/

Published data is only available for a ten year period, from financial year 2012-13 to financial year 2021-22. Data on patient activity is presented in Table 2 – inpatient and day case activity, and the measure of interest can be found by selecting the NHS board of residence in the indicator drop down and either stays, episodes or patients within the measure drop down. Figures where ‘no fixed abode’ will then be listed in the table.

Below is an excerpt from the dataset, with the measure of interest highlighted in bold.