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The Scottish Government places great importance on leisure facilities and believes everyone should have access to these services.

We are fully aware of the issues facing many sports facilities, particularly swimming pools, and the specific issue of energy costs has been raised with us.

Maree Todd MSP, Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport has met with Community Leisure UK on a number of occasions to discuss the challenges and will also raise the issues facing public leisure facilities when she meets with COSLA shortly.

sport scotland, our nation agency for sport, continues to hold regular and ongoing discussions with its partners, including local authorities, COSLA, and Scottish Swimming (the sport’s governing body), to discuss the challenges facing the sporting sector.

sport scotland are supporting Scottish Swimming to deliver a Scottish Swimming Facilities Project. Scottish Swimming recently appointed a contractor to undertake the detailed piece of work to understand accurately the current pool provision, life cycle and predict the landscape in the short, medium, and long term. Conclusions are expected by July 2023.

In addition COSLA are member of the Active Scotland Delivery Group which considers how Scotland can become a more active nation and how we can collaboratively address the challenges we face.

Local sport and leisure facilities, including swimming pools, are vital in supporting the physical and mental health of the nation.

We understand the challenging financial circumstances of operating and maintaining leisure facilities faced by local authorities, largely due to the cost of living crisis. It is the statutory responsibility of all local authorities to manage and maintain their school estate, including swimming pools.

Following the announcement by the UK Government of the financial package to support swimming pools in England, we are considering what support, including ensuring the longer term sustainability and energy efficiency of these facilities, can be provided to the sport and leisure sector in Scotland.

The Scottish Government will continue to work with sportscotland, local authorities, COSLA, Community Leisure UK and Scottish Swimming to understand the challenges facing swimming pools and leisure facilities.

The number of General Practices located in the most and least deprived areas in Scotland is shown in the following table, based on data published by Public Health Scotland relating to 1 January 2023.

The information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost, due to the significant number of meetings which take place between Energy Saving Trust and the Scottish Government. Energy officials alone meet with EST a number of times a week, both ad hoc and scheduled, to discuss the programme of work they deliver on the government's behalf. A significant number of meetings have also taken place within the specified timeframe between transport and water policy officials and EST.

We recognise that accurate local data on long COVID prevalence, distribution across the population and symptoms are needed to forecast and plan for the need for NHS services and specific specialties arising from long COVID.

a. Diagnosis of cases. We do not anticipate that the pausing of the ONS COVID-19 Infection Survey will have any impact on the ability of clinicians to diagnose individuals with long COVID (which includes the case definitions of ‘Ongoing symptomatic COVID-19’ and ‘Post-COVID-19 syndrome’). The identification, assessment and management of patients with long-term effects of COVID-19 in Scotland is guided by the UK-wide clinical guideline developed by the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN), the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP). Further information can be accessed at Overview | COVID-19 rapid guideline: managing the long-term effects of COVID-19 | Guidance | NICE .

b. Monitoring of cases. The ONS survey data has provided a valuable means of estimating the prevalence of self-reported long COVID over time in Scotland. While a pause in the COVID-19 Infection Survey (CIS) will create a gap in the tracking of time-series data on long COVID, long-term trends in prevalence estimates are unlikely to change markedly within a short timeframe. Further, to improve local data collection, we are already supporting activity with NHS National Services Scotland’s long COVID Strategic Network. The Network is taking forward a dedicated workstream to agree outcomes, indicators, monitoring and evaluation to accelerate progress on capturing data to inform the planning of health service provision for people with long COVID.

The Scottish Government has made clear our support for indigenous languages, including Scots.

The Scottish Government provides around £550,000 of funding to Scots organisations who support Scots education. Organisations such as the Scots Language Centre, Dictionaries of the Scots Language, The Association of Scottish Literary Studies, Scots Hoose and Yaldi Books are all supporting Local Authorities through the development of high quality Scots language learning and resources which allow young people access to Scots.

In addition, the Scottish Government works alongside Education Scotland and the SQA who have worked to standardise, promote and make the Scots language more readily available in schools. The Scottish Government’s Scots language policy was officially launched in 2015 and in 2017 Education Scotland published its Scots Language in Curriculum for Excellence report, which outlines good practice for teachers and senior leaders in Primary and Secondary and to Local authority officers with responsibility for literacy and 1+2 implementation.

We are currently considering the responses to the recent consultation on the future of Gaelic and Scots, this will help inform part of the work to develop Scots language policy and future guidance for Local Authorities, as well as the upcoming Scottish Languages Bill.

Statistics on the number of teachers in publicly funded schools in Scotland since 2016 are published in Table 3 of Summary Statistics for Schools in Scotland 2022, available on the Scottish Government website:https://www.gov.scot/publications/summary-statistics-for-schools-in-scotland-2022/pages/overview/ .

Recommendation 19 of the Strategic Transport Projects Review 2 (STPR2) recommends a review of station accessibility across Scotland. This will identify and remove barriers to travel and improve access for all to the rail network, prioritising those stations that have particular accessibility related issues. The anticipated timeline for completion of the review remains Spring 2024.

Transport Scotland is currently waiting for release of the Department for Transport (DfT) accessibility audit review findings in order to inform the STPR2 work.

Rail accessibility remains reserved to the UK Government, which is not an appropriate arrangement for Scotland’s Railway. Nonetheless Transport Scotland officials work closely with the DfT in identifying priorities for the allocation of UK Access for All funding in Scotland.

Transport Scotland officials regularly meet with the Mobility and Access Committee Scotland (MACS) to ensure that Ministers are provided with relevant and accurate advice and information on accessibility needs in Scotland. Transport Scotland also works with ScotRail and Network Rail to ensure that accessibility forms a key part of any Scottish Government funded investment projects and operational policy.

As a result of the difficult decisions which had to be taken through the Emergency Budget review, recruitment of the 1,000 additional roles to support community mental health resilience, ensuring every GP Practice has access to a mental health and wellbeing service has not yet commenced. We have already prioritised significant investment to build mental health capacity in primary care through Action 15 of the Mental Health Strategy 2017-2027 and the Primary Care Improvement Fund.

We remain committed to improving mental health service provision in primary care settings. We are therefore working closely with stakeholders, including the Mental Health in Primary Care National Oversight Group, to develop plans to best use the resource available across the system in 2023-24, and in future years to improve support, assessment and treatment in primary care settings.

Social Security Scotland’s Local Delivery service has teams based in every Scottish Local Authority, and in many cases are co-located with existing services to make sure that they bring support to places that people currently go. This localised approach to support also means that visibility of the service is tailored to meet the demands and demographics of each Local Authority area.

Through analysis of their data, Social Security Scotland are able to identify areas with low take-up or high rates of unsuccessful applications. This evidence can then be used to target engagement with local stakeholders to raise awareness of Scottish benefits and effectively support people to take up their entitlements.