Seòmar agus comataidhean

As of the end of the day on 7 November 2022, there had been a total of 31,118,359 journeys made under the Young Persons’ (Under 22s) Free Bus Travel Scheme. 40.6% of these journeys were made by cardholders aged 5-15. 59.4% of these journeys were made by cardholders aged 16-21.

This data is for total journeys made through the scheme and is not split into Young Scot branded and non-Young Scot branded National Entitlement Cards.

The Scottish Government published its winter resilience plan on 4 October. This sets out a range of actions we are taking to support our health and social sector throughout the winter period - Health and social care: winter resilience overview 2022 to 2023 - gov.scot.

The COVID-19 Four Harms group continue to meet fortnightly to review and consider the overall threat level of Covid-19 in Scotland guided by evidence provided by the Chief Medical Officer. The group are ready to respond to any surge in infections, outbreaks or variant of concern and have contingency planning in place.

For all scenarios we know that effective and timely delivery of the seasonal flu and COVID-19 vaccines is crucial, and our winter vaccination programme is now well underway. As of 30th October 2022, 2,420,721 Autumn/Winter Vaccines have been administered in Scotland – 1,214,300 COVID-19 vaccines and 1,206,421 adult flu vaccines. Over 87% of older adult care home residents, and 80% of over-65s have received their COVID-19 booster thus far.

We continue to monitor RSV as part of the Public Health Scotland’s surveillance programme and currently have no evidence to suggest that we are facing an RSV epidemic this winter. NHS Board winter plans take into account the predicted surge of seasonal flu, RSV and Norovirus activity that can happen between October and March and have adequate resources in place to deal with potential outbreaks across this period.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-02957 on 12 October 2021 . All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

Table 1 shows the number of patients under the age of 16 with a recorded diagnosis of tooth decay who were admitted to hospital for a tooth extraction in (a) 2012 (b) 2016 and (c) 2021, in NHS (i) Ayrshire and Arran, and (ii) Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

Table 1:

  Source: SMR01, Public Health Scotland, extract: November 2022.

( A)Within the Scottish Government funding of health and care research falls under the remit of the Chief Scientist Office (CSO).

As part of the Scottish Government response to the pandemic, in October 2020 CSO launched a funding call seeking applications which aimed to investigate the longer-term effects of COVID-19. Following an independent expert review process, 9 projects were funded with a total funding commitment of £2.5 million. The funding outcome was announced in December 2020.

https://www.cso.scot.nhs.uk/funded-research/long-covid-call/

All of the above 9 projects have completed their 6 month and 1 year progress reports. On 31st March 2022 CSO hosted a virtual symposium where the lead investigators for each of the 9 projects presented the results obtained to date to an audience of researchers, policymakers and patient groups.

(B)Currently, there is no single diagnostic test that health professionals can use to identify long COVID. In the first instance, clinicians will try to rule out any other possible causes for symptoms as part of a thorough clinical assessment, tailoring tests and investigations in line with the person’s presenting signs and symptoms.

All NHS Scotland Boards are providing assessment and support for people with long COVID, delivered across the full range of services provided by our NHS. This includes local primary care teams, community based rehabilitation services and referrals for further investigation delivered in secondary care settings where needed.

We are providing NHS Boards and partners with additional resource to deliver the best local models of care for assessment, diagnostic tests, and support for the treatment or management of symptoms.

The Housing Need and Demand Assessment (HNDA) Tool contains a default count of households who are both overcrowded and concealed. The Scottish Government's Centre for Housing Market Analysis (CHMA) also publishes separate counts of overcrowded and concealed households which local authorities may choose to use. Alternatively, local authorities may choose to use local information about overcrowded and concealed households using sources such as waiting lists or local survey work, where they can evidence that this is robust.

Specific details are published as bespoke separate documents, as follows:

• Single count of overcrowded households and single count of concealed households (see Table 3)

Estimating concealed family rates with overcrowding using Scottish survey data (2016-2018) (www.gov.scot)

• Count of households who are both overcrowded and concealed (see Excel worksheet called ‘HoTOC’)

Housing Need and Demand Assessment (HNDA): tool 2020 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Local authorities, as both the statutory housing and planning authority, are responsible for assessing housing requirements and set out priorities in their Local Housing Strategies.

The Housing Need and Demand Assessment Tool helps local authorities to access robust, quality assured data sets and to reduce the cost and complexity for local authorities in undertaking such assessments. The Tool is designed to use recognised national datasets and also provides flexibility to incorporate a variety of types of housing need where there is robust local information and evidenced policy drivers. Local authorities are able to augment this data with a range of additional sources including primary data where they have it.

It is the responsibility of local authorities through their Local Housing Strategy (LHS) to determine the appropriate housing required in their area, informed by a Housing Need and Demand Assessment (HNDA).The HNDA is a policy neutral evidence-base which helps inform LHS outcomes and priorities for future housing and related service delivery, including specialist provision, to meet the needs of a range of equalities groups. All local authorities are required to carry out an Equalities Impact Assessment when developing a LHS.

Local authorities or housing market partnerships are not required to procure primary data in order to meet the requirements of a Housing Need and Demand Assessment (HNDA). The HNDA process provides flexibility to incorporate a variety of types of housing need where there is robust local information and evidenced policy drivers. It is for each local authority or housing market partnership to consider relevant sources of information and whether procuring primary data is appropriate to their circumstances.

Existing need within the Housing Need and Demand Assessment process (HNDA) can be informed by a number of factors. As local authorities are responsible for undertaking the HNDA, they are responsible for selecting what they consider to be the most appropriate count of existing need for their area.

Households where adult children live with parents are captured in the household projections prepared by National Records of Scotland (NRS). Household projections are based on past trends and any trend, upwards or downwards, in the incidence of adult children living with parents, will, along with many other factors that drive change in household numbers, be captured and projected forwards.