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Theresponsibility for planning and delivering pre-school education lies with localauthorities. Authorities need to take population projections into account toensure that there is enough pre-school education provision available in theright areas. Over time this may involve opening new provision and closing othercentres in line with patterns of demand.

The Scottish governmenthas no plans to undertake an investigation into the reasons for the closure ofindividual pre-school education settings.

The Child ProtectionLine has answered the following calls since February 2007:

Feb 2007	98
March 2007	82
April 2007	40
May 2007	36
June 2007	44
July 2007	27
Total	327

 

The Scottish governmentprovides local authorities with block grant for their core revenue servicesthrough the core local government finance settlement. A needs-based methodology(otherwise known as grant aided expenditure (GAE)) is used to determine the allocationof that block grant. As GAE is a component used in distributing the total blockgrant that the Scottish Government provides to local government, it is not abudget or a spending target. It is for each local authority to decide how bestto allocate the resulting overall block grant across all their services, basedon local needs and priorities.

The GAEallocations for each local authority for pre‑school services in 2007‑08is shown in the following table.

Local Authority Area	Nursery Teaching Staff (£ Million)	Pre-School Education (£ Million)
Aberdeen City	0.931	6.822
Aberdeenshire	1.281	9.959
Angus	0.563	3.775
Argyll and Bute	0.416	3.069
Clackmannanshire	0.256	1.634
Dumfries and Galloway	0.666	5.319
Dundee City	0.664	4.698
East Ayrshire	0.617	4.031
East Dunbartonshire	0.536	3.291
East Lothian	0.504	3.197
East Renfrewshire	0.506	3.175
Edinburgh, City of	2.045	13.686
Eilean Siar	0.121	1.051
Falkirk	0.788	4.980
Fife	1.897	11.896
Glasgow City	2.913	19.259
Highland	1.080	8.649
Inverclyde	0.402	2.773
Midlothian	0.457	3.016
Moray	0.441	3.249
North Ayrshire	0.727	4.556
North Lanarkshire	1.893	11.575
Orkney	0.087	0.764
Perth and Kinross	0.719	5.307
Renfrewshire	0.924	5.795
Scottish Borders	0.597	4.606
Shetland	0.119	1.157
South Ayrshire	0.521	3.271
South Lanarkshire	1.595	10.002
Stirling	0.461	3.326
West Dunbartonshire	0.472	3.018
West Lothian	1.015	6.303
Scotland	26.215	177.195

In addition thereare other relevant GAE allocations which go wider than pre-school services. Theseinclude Sure Start (£59.912 million), special education (£272.688 million) and childcarestrategy (£44.556 million).

Ministers are in dialoguewith a range of stakeholders to gather evidence and views on how we can use thestrategic spending review to set plans that will enable us to fulfil our purposeand achieve our strategic objectives. Social care and support will be part of thatconsideration.

Since audiology servicesare not consultant-led, or defined as a speciality, and are a sub-specialty ofear, nose and throat, they do not fall under the current 18 week target of the ScottishGovernment. However, the Scottish Government is committed to improving servicesfor the benefit of patients, ispleased that a number of NHSScotland boards have met, and in some cases exceeded,the 26 week target from referral to fitting set by the Audiology Modernisation ProjectBoard and will continue to measureboards’ progress towards modernisation of the service allowing us to identify regionalvariations in service delivery and standards.

Where waiting timesremain unacceptably high, the Scottish Government continues to work directly withthe boards involved to help improve the situation as a matter of urgency.

The Cabinet Secretaryfor Health and Wellbeing has publicly made clear the Scottish Government’s oppositionon the use of public money to assist the private sector compete with the NHS.

The national private sector call-off contract, put in place underthe audiology modernisation project to support NHS boards in reducing waiting times,recently ended. In the meantime, the Allied Health Professionals contract, whichruns until May 2008, allows NHS boards to employ temporary locum audiologists toassist in reducing waiting times.

I have asked Angiolina Foster Chief Executive of Communities Scotland to respond. Her response is as follows:

Local authoritiesthat have submitted Standard Delivery Plans (SDPs), setting out how they will achievethe Scottish Housing Quality Standard (SHQS), plan to invest approximately £1.94billion by 2015. This figure is in 2004-05 prices and is based on individual localauthorities’ interpretations of the Standard and assessment of investment needs.

The breakdown of plannedSHQS investment by local authority is as follows:

Local Authority	Total Expenditure to Meet SHQS (£000)
Aberdeen City Council	210,752
Aberdeenshire Council	115,084
Angus Council	10,405
Clackmannanshire Council	15,307
Dundee City Council	133,760
East Ayrshire Council	91,759
East Dunbartonshire Council	38,019
East Lothian Council	131,485
East Renfrewshire Council	40,191
Falkirk Council	124,796
Fife Council	200,420
Midlothian Council	34,534
Moray Council	7,382
North Ayrshire Council	147,474
North Lanarkshire Council	237,317
Orkney Islands Council	5,066
Perth and Kinross Council	53,729
Shetland Islands Council	6,777
South Ayrshire Council	65,712
South Lanarkshire Council	213,000
West Lothian Council	55,350
Total Expenditure	1,941,328

 

Local authoritiesthat have transferred their stock to housing associations (Glasgow, Dumfries and Galloway, Scottish Borders, Eilean Siar and Argyll and Bute),or that are in the process of doing so (Inverclyde) are not required to submit anSDP. Stirling, Renfrewshire, Highland, Edinburgh and West Dunbartonshire Councilsare currently developing their SDPs which will include details of their plannedSHQS related investment.

The operation of theChild Protection Line is under review and development through a national workinggroup, whose membership includes representatives from Child Protection Committees(including police and social workers) and out-of-hours and phone-based child protectionservice providers. See www.scotland.gov.uk/childprotectionfor further information.

We plan to commissiona rigorous independent evaluation of the service after it has been operational for18 months, in August 2008.

We are currently consideringhow best to increase public awareness of the national Child Protection Line andwill be discussing proposals with the national working group for this project andwith Child Protection Committees.

Organisations shouldbe paid the full costs for providing a service, and we expect local authoritiesand third sector organisations to conduct suitable negotiations for service deliverythat take all costs into account.