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Our Culture Strategy sets out our ambition for everyone across Scotland to lead a cultural life of their choice, ensuring that everyone has an equal opportunity to enjoy and contribute to culture, the creative industries and the arts.

Creative Scotland’s regularly funded organisations are contractually obliged to develop and implement Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Action Plans. This covers all aspects of the organisation across governance, staffing, programme, audiences and marketing. Creative Scotland are also involved in “All In”, a UK wide initiative from Arts Council England, developing a new UK arts access scheme for D/deaf, disabled, and neurodivergent people, representing the Scottish perspective.

VisitScotland’s website already provides information on the benefits for event organisers of engaging further in accessible tourism and how events can create their own access guides. In addition, amongst other resources, VisitScotland’s successful inclusive tourism project sets out the existing non-statutory Accessibility Guidance for Events produced by VisitScotland.

Regards to training of venue and security staff in relation to visual impairment, the Scottish Government expects all relevant organisations to comply with the requirement of the Equality Act 2010 and relevant codes of practice published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and address their broader duties under UK health and safety and equalities legislation including the requirement for service providers to make reasonable adjustments in circumstances where a disabled person is placed at a substantial disadvantage compared with non-disabled people. The Equality and Human Rights Commission is an independent, and reserved public body, and therefore cannot be directed by Scottish Ministers.

Microsoft announced global changes to their licences in August 2023. At that time, Education Scotland took lead responsibility for communicating this change to all local authorities via their nominated Glow Key Contact, given that the statutory responsibility for the delivery of education rests with local authorities in Scotland. Education Scotland has undertaken a survey and engaged directly with each local authority throughout the past year as appropriate. All local authorities have confirmed their position, and all have either already implemented their plans for mitigations or are in the process of doing so.

Local authorities are responsible for communicating any Glow service changes to their staff. Education Scotland made local authorities aware of this global change announced by Microsoft at the Glow Key Contacts meeting in August 2023, which is the primary conduit between Education Scotland and local authorities for information sharing and engagement regarding Glow. Changes have been discussed at a number of subsequent meetings and Education Scotland issued formal email communications on this topic to this group in October 2023, January 2024, March 2024, and June 2024, as well as publishing detailed guidance on Glow Connect. Education Scotland has also undertaken a survey to assess impact.

Education Scotland and the Scottish Government have been in regular and direct contact with Microsoft officials since the global changes were announced by Microsoft to their services in August 2023. That engagement has primarily focused on wider changes to tenancy storage limits under the A1 Licence which is the subject of our existing contract with Microsoft. It is as a result of this direct and prolonged engagement throughout the past year that Microsoft have agreed that the Glow Microsoft tenancy will not be subject to this restriction to storage limits during our contract term.

The free offer of offline desktop applications for Office 365 was intended for personal and home use. The vast majority of local authorities have not relied on this for school-based devices. In all cases, local authorities have in place, or are putting in place, alternative arrangements which afford access to the desktop version of Office products in schools and on council-issued devices.

The Chief Dental Officer and a Deputy Chief Dental Officer met with Air Vice Marshal (AVM) and Director of Defence Health, Dave Mcloughlin earlier this year. Consequently, the Chief Dental Officer and AVM McLoughlin issued a joint letter to all dental teams on 22 February 2024.

The Scottish Government does not hold data on how many whole-time equivalent GPs have (a) been employed and (b) retired or left the profession, in each year since 2019.

Data on the GP Workforce is published annually by NHS Education for Scotland in the General Practice Workforce Survey report and includes the whole time equivalent number of GPs in Scotland.

The Scottish Government remains committed to improving the care and wellbeing of people through the best use of digital technologies. We work closely with NHS National Services Scotland (NSS), who manage the rollout of the new national GP IT System, ‘Vision’ supplied by Cegedim Healthcare Solutions. Our focus always is on patient safety and the resilience of such systems. The recent performance issue referred to was quickly identified as due to bandwidth capacity and was quickly resolved, since when there has been stable and consistent service for GP practices using Vision.

Data on the Whole-Time Equivalent GP Workforce is published annually by NHS Education for Scotland (NES) in the General Practice Workforce Survey report . As of March 2023 the estimated WTE number of GPs (excluding GP registrars/specialist trainees) was 3,478.4, where 1 WTE is defined as 8 contracted sessions per week.

GP headcount is published by NES through the General Practitioner Headcount report. In September 2023 there were 5,168 Headcount GPs in Scotland (including GP Registrars on placement in general practice).

NES are due to publish results from the 2024 General Practice Workforce Survey and the 2024 General Practitioner Headcount data later this year.

There is no legislation that specifically sets out rules on the use of netting on buildings to prevent birds from nesting or roosting. However, anyone obstructing or preventing any bird from using its nest during the nesting season through the installation of netting, would be committing an offence under Section 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside (Scotland) Act 1981.

Bird netting can be an effective and lawful measure when used correctly. Guidance is available on the RSPCA webpage , the NatureScot webpage , and the RSPB webpage on how and when to use bird netting.