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The Scottish Government provides annual funding to Energy Saving Trust (EST) who are an independent organisation working to address the climate emergency. EST then deliver the Plugged-in Communities (PiC) grant fund on behalf of Scottish Ministers.

EST publish details of all PiC grant recipients along with the grant values on their website, this information can be found here - Plugged-in communities grant fund - Energy Saving Trust .

In 2023-2024 the following organisations received Plugged-in Community funding:

Annandale Community Transport Services

Beannachar Ltd

Caithness Rural Transport

Camphill School Aberdeen

Checkin Works

Coalfield Community Transport

Creich Croick & Kincardine District Day Care Association

Elder Voice

Glasgow Children’s Hospital

Glasgow No.1 Baby and Family Support Service

Handicabs (Lothian)

Healthy and Active in East Kilbride

Homeless Project Scotland

Local Energy Action Plan

Lothian Community Transport Services

Moray Carshare

South Ayrshire Community Transport

Southwest Community Transport

St Madoes and Kinfauns Parish Church

Tagsa Uibhist

The Food Train.

There is no specific provision for long COVID research in the Scottish Government Budget for 2024-25.

Within the Scottish Government, funding of Health and Care Research comes under the remit of the Chief Scientist Office (CSO).

The CSO's Translational Clinical Studies (TCS) Committee and the Health Improvement, Protection and Services Research (HIPS) Committee each meet twice per year to consider funding applications. Details of the application process are published on the CSO website.

https://www.cso.scot.nhs.uk/grant-funding/response-mode-funding-schemes/

Applications on long-COVID are welcomed. In common with all other applications, these would go through the CSO's standard independent peer review process.

To date 2 research projects on long COVID have been funded via this route:

HIPS/23/08

Long COVID And Frontline Public Service Occupations: Impacts On Employees And Organisations

University of Stirling

Dr Alice MacLean/Professor Kate Hunt

Funding awarded £296,960

HIPS/22/33

Caring for Long COVID in Primary Care: Using Patient and Professional Experience to Build Co-Designed Solutions. A Participatory, Mixed Methods Study.

University of Glasgow

Professor Catherine O’Donnell

Funding awarded £297,900

Through UK-wide funding agreements, researchers based in Scotland are able to access the following research funding programmes administered by the National Institute for Health & Care Research (NIHR):

Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME)

Evidence Synthesis

Health and Social Care Delivery Research (HSDR)

Health Technology Assessment (HTA)

Invention for Innovation (i4i)

Programme Development Grants (PDG)

Programme Grants for Applied Research (PGfAR)

Public Health Research (PHR)

Research for Social Care (RfSC)

Within their individual remits, the above programmes can consider applications for research in long COVID.

CSO is working with the health research community in Scotland to ensure awareness of these opportunities and to maximise the number of high quality applications from Scotland to these research funding programmes going forward.

The Scottish Government is committed to working with NHS Boards to deliver our ambition to protect, stabilise and recover planned care. This includes maximising theatre productivity, optimising capacity and regional working.

Regional cancer networks have undertaken, and continue to undertake, improvement work to reduce ovarian cancer surgery waits. This improvement work includes increasing surgery provision and regional support.

The Scottish Cancer Network will be establishing a new National Ovarian Cancer Clinical Network, which will work to ensure equity of access to treatment for all women with ovarian cancer in Scotland.

The Scottish Government has fully funded Network Rail Scotland to meet the assessment of its requirements as carried out by the independent rail regulator for the next five year rail investment Control Period (2024-29).

The total funding for the rail sector in Scotland for financial year 2023-2024 alone is circa £1.4 billion. This is compared to pre-pandemic levels of around £1 billion, demonstrating a significant increase in investment by the Scottish Government.

Scottish Ministers’ priorities remain focussed on a high-performing, efficient and safe rail network. These objectives are fully aligned with ScotRail and Caledonian Sleeper so that best value is secured for Scotland’s rail passengers, communities and businesses.

Where the ORR has determined increases in spend, such as operations to adapt to climate change, the Scottish Government has accepted and fully funded these recommendations, in order to strike the right balance in this Control Period among operations, maintenance and renewals.

The Scottish Government’s position has been, and remains, focussed on the ‘whole cancer pathway’ which is why the 62-day standard is in place. This covers the period from an urgent suspicion of cancer (USC) referral from a primary care clinician to the start of treatment for Scotland’s most common cancers, including ovarian cancer.

The latest published statistics (July-September 2023) show the median time for an ovarian cancer patient from USC referral to first treatment is 51 days. Once a decision to treat is made, the median wait for treatment is 12 days for ovarian cancer patients.

Scottish Government officials meet with Boards’ Cancer Management Teams fortnightly (monthly for Island Boards) to ensure patients are moving timeously through these pathways and are treated as quickly as possible. Where cancer pathway challenges are identified, innovative solutions are explored and best practice shared from other areas.

We are investing £40 million over five years to support cancer services, with £10 million provided to Boards in 2023-24 alone.

The Scottish Government’s position is that lifeline ferry services are classed as Services of Public Economic Interest under the UK Subsidy Control Act.

There are currently seven members of staff in the Scottish Government subsidy control team.

The Digital Prescribing and Dispensing Pathways (DPDP) Programme is being developed, and it is intended to replace the paper prescription with a digital solution in community settings. The programme has been commissioned and funded by the Scottish Government. It is being jointly delivered by NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) and NHS Education for Scotland (NES) in collaboration with stakeholders across Scotland.

The inclusion of prescriptions for stoma items has been raised by the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer with the DPDP programme team, and consideration is being given as to how stoma items can be brought within the scope of the programme.

a) The Health and Social Care Alliance were funded £10,776 by the Scottish Government in 2021-22 to carry out specific work to support people with chronic pain.

Since 2009, The Health and Social Care Alliance has also administered the ‘Self Management Fund’ on behalf of the Scottish Government which has included projects which support chronic pain issues. Details of funded projects can be found on The Health and Social Care Alliance’s website: Funded Projects – Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland (alliance-scotland.org.uk)

The funding outlined in the following tables includes funding from the Chronic Pain Winter Support Fund which, in 2021, provided an additional £240,000 to increase the capacity of local support available for people with chronic pain during the winter period.

b) Pain Association Scotland

Alongside a dedicated Clyde and Hebrides Ferry Service 3 team and internal specialist support on Legal, Financial & Subsidy control, the Scottish Government have engaged with external specialist technical, legal and financial advisors and will continue to engage as required to complete the necessary due diligence on a potential “Teckal” direct award.