Chamber and committees

Our winter service includes precautionary salting of all carriageways and the more important footways in advance of forecast ice and snow. Since 2007-08, pre-wetted salting has been used on all our trunk roads.

Our pre-wetted salting involves spreading dry rock salt and brine in the proportion of 70% dry salt to 30% of fully saturated brine with a salt concentration of around 23%. All salt for de-icing on our trunk roads is required to be 6.3 millimetre grading particle size complying with British Standard 3247:1991 and treated with an anti-caking agent. Our contract specification does allow for abrasive aggregates to be considered in a ratio of 50:50 with salt but this is rarely used and is predominantly as an additional mitigation measure for extreme snow events.

Transport Scotland continues to collaborate and support winter service best practise on a local, national and world level through its current relationships with Local Authorities, Highways England, the National Winter Service Research Group (NWSRG) and the World Roads Association (WRA).

For winter salt treatments, roads authorities in Europe and North America are moving more and more to liquid-only spreading to prevent ice forming on roads. Recent studies from Europe have demonstrated the durability of liquid brine-only spreading in comparison with pre-wetted salt. They concluded that for precautionary salt treatments, especially on dry and moist surfaces, that sodium chloride brine-only spreading is recommended because it requires less salt and stays longer on the surface. For the past four winter seasons, we have been trialling sodium chloride-only liquid treatments on specific routes (A9, A77, A702 and A835) to develop our understanding of liquid performance in the range of conditions experienced on the Scottish trunk road network.

As I outlined in my answer to S5W-14676, The Scottish Government, in partnership with Skills Development Scotland and employability providers, has a range of support packages available to help support individuals to make the transition from one career into another. This practical support includes training to compile and update their CVs.

From April, we will introduce our new Scottish employability service, Fair Start Scotland. The service will provide tailored and personalised support for those further from the labour market for whom work is a reasonable objective.

Individuals who require Systems, Applications and Products (SAP) training should, in the first instance, contact their local Skills Development Scotland office for help and advice.

On 28 February 2018 NHS Grampian issued a position statement with regard to the prescription of FreeStyle Libre. The statement is published on the NHS Board web site and can be found through the following link http://www.nhsgrampian.co.uk/nhsgrampian/files/NHSG_FreeStyleLibre.pdf .

The regulation governing the construction, weight, use and equipment of motor vehicles is a reserved matter. The Scottish Government has no plans to explore the introduction of legislation to make the use of winter tyres mandatory in Scotland at this time.

Whilst we know severe weather will cause disruption, this Government has taken a wide range of steps to assess and improve our resilience to the challenges of winter, to mitigate its impacts and to recover our transport networks and get businesses and daily life back to normal as quickly as possible. This has been done in partnership with a broad range of public, private and third sector partners and has included new investment, development and innovation - all learning the lessons from recent winters.

As a direct legacy of our successful hosting of the Ryder Cup, in 2015 Scotland was chosen as the host for the Solheim Cup, also to be held at Gleneagles in 2019. Hosting the highest profile event in women’s golf will further enhance Scotland’s international profile as the Home of Golf and will inspire a new generation of children and, in particular, girls to take up the game and get involved in sport more generally.

As part of our support for the Solheim Cup we are co-funding, with the R&A, the post of Women and Young People Golf Development Manager, to help deliver on our legacy aims to increase participation and inspire future champions. This follows on from our support for ClubGolf, Scotland’s junior golf development programme, which has introduced more than 400,000 children to golf since it was launched.

• That they are actively seeking alternative employment and have identified valid vacancies in a relevant sector; and that
• They have identified specific retraining, up-skilling or certification requirements that will advance the pursuit of the identified opportunities.

One of TTF’s strengths is that the individuals are enabled to choose the relevant training, which can include System Application Products, that will aid individuals in securing employment in their chosen field. As at 20 February 2018, TTF has supported seven individuals undertaking System Application Products with UK providers, and the funding includes course fees, exams and certification.

The Scottish Government announced on 7 March that the STEM bursary scheme will open for applications on 3 April on the STEM Bursary Scotland website, which is hosted by Skills Development Scotland.

A study was carried out in 2015 into the condition of oil storage facilities used for onward distribution, which were exempt from oil storage legislation. A number of issues were found which had potential to impact on public safety, or the environment. It had also been identified that some of the exempt structures were of similar volume to installations already covered by legislation.

Following engagement with the sector, and consultation, the decision was taken to include oil distribution depots in oil storage legislation and consolidate the regulations into the Water Environment (Controlled Activities) (Scotland) Regulations (CAR).

The consolidation of oil storage into CAR provides flexibility in that where a site complies with the general binding rules there is no additional cost to the operator. Where a site does not comply with the rules there is a requirement to apply to SEPA for a licence. Licences can be issued on a single fee multi-site basis; allowing operators to include a number of sites under one licence. SEPA will work closely with these operators on a mutual timetable for improvement plans, to provide the required environmental protection.

There are 26 companies operating out of 95 depots, not all of which contain oil storage. SEPA assessments, in association with operators, have identified that some sites are already compliant and will not require a licence. A self-assessment checklist is available to allow operators to check for compliance with the general binding rules of CAR, or whether a licence may need to be applied for. The multi-site licence approach will also reduce the overall number of licences which may be required.

The use of private laboratories by the NHS is a matter for individual Boards and will be dependent on demand and availability of services.

Private laboratories are not used by the NHS to process Scottish Clinical Microbiology and Virology samples however this is different south of the border where public-private partnerships exist.

Some labs have used these companies in the past to address short term staff shortages but there is no long term use and there is no evidence to suggest an increasing use.

The Scottish Government, in partnership with Skills Development Scotland and employability providers, has a range of support packages available to help support individuals to make the transition from one career into another, where that requires a specific certification or qualification.

We also provide support through our initiative for responding to redundancy situations, Partnership Action for Continuing Employment (PACE). Through providing skills development and employability support, PACE aims to minimise the time individuals affected by redundancy are out of work.

Transition Training Fund (TTF)

The Transition Training Fund (TTF) is focused on supporting people who have lost or face losing their jobs in the oil and gas sector and the support will help them build on their existing skills to transition into other roles in the oil and gas industry, other energy industry and manufacturing employment or any other available roles.

The Fund is providing support by offering grants to individuals to support redeployment through retraining and upskilling. The fund is also helping people with the costs of maintaining any licences needed to work in the sector or to acquire new ones to broaden their skillset. Funding may be approved for up to £4,000.

At the end of January 2018, a total of 2,649 people had received support through TTF. The following table showing the occupational sectors to which their training applied.

Individual Training Accounts

Individual Training Accounts (ITAs) are targeted at individuals looking to get into or back into employment. The funding is up to £200 towards the cost of a training course.

Employability Fund (EF)

The Employability Fund targets those who are not currently in employment, education or training and delivers a range of interventions to those in need of support at Stages 2-4 of the Strategic Skills Pipeline. Stage 4 provision is designed to enable individuals to access sustained employment through industry specific training. It helps individuals who are likely to be job ready in terms of generic employability skills but need specific skills and/or certification to improve their chances of gaining employment.

No contribution is expected from participants towards the cost of training or obtaining qualifications.