Seòmar agus comataidhean

The provision for concessionary fares schemes referred to in the Draft Budget provides for section 70 grant payments for concessionary travel schemes run by local authorities where there is a demonstrated shortfall in funding over the grant aided expenditure allocations. It also provides new resources for the two new national concessionary schemes as stated in Partnership Agreement commitments: one scheme for older and disabled people, which will subsume and extend current entitlements, and the other scheme for young persons. No breakdown of the funding beyond the headline figures is available at this stage.

Police in Scotland do not operate a system of formal police cautions, as is the case in England and Wales. No record is held centrally on informal police cautions or warnings in Scotland.

Of the £60 million made available in 2004-05 and 2005-06, £50 million has been allocated to local authorities to fund community warden schemes, fill gaps in services for victims and witnesses of antisocial behaviour and other practical initiatives at local level, support the creation of proactive antisocial behaviour teams in local authorities, and to help them and their Community Planning Partner prepare local antisocial behaviour strategies. The balance has been earmarked for other purposes that will support the overall delivery of the antisocial behaviour strategy, including training, dissemination of good practice, piloting of new approaches and monitoring and evaluation.

Decisions on the precise allocation of the £67.5 million available in 2006-07 and 2007-08 will be made shortly but, broadly speaking, this will be used to support the delivery of local antisocial behaviour strategies.

This funding of £17.7 million is allocated to the New Educational Developments Division within the Education Department. The principal activities of the division and the associated funding is as follows:

School Improvement £1.2 million

This funding allows the division to promote continuous improvement in education for school-age children through roll-out of the School ImprovementFramework, including policy development and associated activity around theNational Priorities in Education.

Future Learning and Teaching £1.7 million

This funding is to support forward-looking approaches to learning and teaching.  It consists of a programme of individual projects allocated to schools, each of which is evaluated by a team of independent researchers.

Schools ICT/SSDN £14.8 million

This funding allows the division to take an overall strategic view of the use of ICT in schools and wider educational settings, including supporting the provision of Digital Content for schools, the Scottish Schools Digital Network and teaching approaches facilitated by the new technology.

The additional capital funding being made available by the Executive to local authorities is for the introduction of 20 mph speed limits around schools, safer routes to school projects and the development of home zones. This specific additional funding does not cover the gritting of roads.

Non-trunk roads are the responsibility of the local authorities concerned, and their funding forms part of the general Local Government Finance Settlement. It is entirely a matter for individual authorities to decide what priority should be given to the maintenance and improvement, including gritting, of each road for which they are responsible.

All 32 local authorities in Scotland will have appointed community wardens for schemes supported under our first round of funding to tackle antisocial behaviour by the end of November. The dates that appointments were made in each authority are shown in the table below. Further wardens supported under our second round of funding will be appointed in the next few months.

Local Authority	Date Appointed
Aberdeen City	June
Aberdeenshire	July
Angus	May
Argyll and Bute	October
Clackmannanshire	June
Dumfries and Galloway	May
Dundee City	May
East Ayrshire	July
East Dunbartonshire	June
East Lothian	October
East Renfrewshire	June
Edinburgh City	April
Falkirk	April
Fife	August
Glasgow City	June
Highland	June
Inverclyde	July
Midlothian	September
Moray	May
North Ayrshire	May
North Lanarkshire	August
Orkney	July
Perth and Kinross	May
Renfrewshire	April
Scottish Borders	October
Shetland Islands	August
South Ayrshire	June
South Lanarkshire	August
Stirling	November*
West Dunbartonshire	April
West Lothian	March
Western Isles	August

Note: This chart shows the dates wardens supported under our first round of funding to tackle antisocial behaviour were first appointed in each area. In some cases, warden teams were recruited in stages and there would have been a further lead-in time for training, disclosure checks, etc before wardens were patrolling on the streets. *Expected appointment date.)

The Scottish Legal Aid Board referred five such cases to the procurator fiscal in 2003-04.

In 2003-04 the Scottish Legal Aid Board refused 65 applications in these circumstances.

In 2003-04 the Scottish Legal Aid Board terminated the grant of legal aid in 146 cases where it believed the applicants had not provided complete and accurate information about their financial circumstances. In a further 23 cases, grants of advice and assistance were terminated.

No.