Seòmar agus comataidhean

Under current fish health legislation, it is a requirement to report increased mortality in aquaculture animals to either a veterinarian or Scottish Government's fish health inspectorate. The total number of salmon mortalities specifically attributable to sea lice is not held. Recent, industry-wide figures are published here: http://scottishsalmon.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/May-2018.pdf

Scottish Government does not hold information on the economic loss resulting from sea lice. The Scottish salmon farming industry estimated recently that their cost of controlling sea lice is in the region of £70 million per annum.

SEPA as Scotland's environmental regulator:

(a) monitors the impact of operational fish farms on the sea bed through a combination of monitoring provided by the operators and the results of its own monitoring and investigative surveys to check that relevant environmental standards are being met; and

(b) manages effluent through setting licence conditions which include limits on the quantity of fish that can be farmed and on medicine usage. These limits are calculated with the aim of tightly controlling the impact on the sea bed in the permitted zone of impact around cages, ensuring that concentrations of pollutants beyond this do not exceed levels at which damage to biodiversity could result.

Since the opening of the Borders railway we have gradually increased the number of peak services which have more carriages than the normal two. The following table shows the number of seats provided in the morning and evening peaks.

Following engagement by the Scottish Government, ScotRail will now only deploy the practice of “skip-stopping” in exceptional circumstances. The effectiveness of this process is monitored by Transport Scotland.

On the Borders Railway: there were 27 reported instances of stations on the Borders Line being affected by skip-stopping since the start of this calendar year. However, since the change in policy from the end of March, there has been no skip-stopping of stations on the Borders Line.

The Scottish Government published Guidance for Completing a Disabled Access and Facilities Statement to support applicants in completing, and local authorities in assessing, the required statement. The Guidance advises that it is important to consider that not all disabilities are obvious and provides a list of disabilities, which may be hidden.

The Guidance can be viewed at http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2018/03/2767 .

The Scottish Government has published Guidance for Completing a Disabled Access and Facilities Statement to support applicants in completing, and local authorities in assessing, the required statement. The Scottish Government encouraged local authorities to provide a link to the Guidance alongside their alcohol premises/provisional premises licence application form.

The Guidance can be viewed at http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2018/03/2767 .

Legislation on equalities is largely reserved to the UK Government at Westminster.

However since 30 March 2018, individuals applying to their local Licensing Board for a new liquor premises licence have been required to provide a disability access and facilities statement along with their application. The statement is to contain information about disabled access to the premises and the facilities and any other provision available to aid the use of the premises by disabled people.

Scottish Ministers expect to lay regulations in September to amend the Licensing Register (Scotland) Regulations 2007. The amendment will require the statement accompanying an application for a premises or provisional premises licence to be contained in the public licensing register kept by every Licensing Board. This will provide access to some information held by local authorities.

This provision does not interfere with the existing duty under equality law to make reasonable adjustments to make sure that a person can use a service as close as it is reasonably possible to get to the standard that is usually offered to non-disabled people.

There are no current plans for further legislation or work in this area.

The number of joiners and leavers across an entire year is not captured centrally. However, the equivalent information available centrally, showing the number of net joiners and net leavers for qualified nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Borders each year between 2008 and 2017 is shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Qualified nursing and midwifery staff in NHS Borders - Net joiners and leavers, in each year ending 30 Sep, from 2008 to 2017 (Whole Time Equivalent).

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of applicants to the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland by SIMD quintile between 2007 and 2018.

Information on the number of applicants to Conservatoires is collected by UCAS. Provider-level data is only available for applications for these institutions and breakdowns are limited to domicile, sex and age.