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Under the terms of the Public Finance and Accountability (Scotland) Act 2000, the Auditor General is responsible for the external audit of the Care Commission. In addition to conducting the audit of the commission’s accounts,the Auditor General may initiate an examination into the economy, efficiency and effectiveness with which the Care Commission has used its resources in discharging its functions. In determining whether such an examination should becarried out, the Auditor General must take into account any proposals made by Parliament.

No such resources or guidelines have been provided to local authorities.

£4,281,000has been allocated in the third tranche of funding to the following premises modernisation projects under this initiative, which wholly or in part involve dental services.

Board	Project	Value	Description
Borders	Eyemouth	£39,300	Upgrade of dental facilities at Community School
Dumfries and Galloway	Stewartry	£105,000	Upgrade of 3 GDP practices to accommodate community dental service
Grampian	Buckie/Keith	£12,200	Upgrade of dental facilities in schools
Greater Glasgow	Easterhouse Health Centre	£3,125,000	Reconfiguration of Health Centre including Dental Outreach Facility
Highland	Culloden	£81,000	Extension to medical centre to provide dental clinic and accommodation
	Dunbar Hospital	£43,300	Dental surgery to be provided within hospital at Thurso
	Lawson Memorial hospital	£42,200	Dental surgery to be provided within hospital at Golspie
Lothian	Lauriston Walk in Dental Centre	£558,000	Introduction of a service to meet immediate and medium dental treatment needs
Orkney	Stromness	£200,000	New build community dental facility
Tayside	Perth/Dundee	£75,000	Improvement to emergency dental premises

The number of substantive applications for salaried dentist posts are shown brokendown by area in the following table:

NHS Board	1999-2000	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04	Total
Argyll and Clyde	1	2	1		2	6
Ayrshire and Arran			3			3
Borders			2	2	3	7
Dumfries and Galloway				4		4
Fife					2	2
Forth Valley					9	9
Grampian	2	1	5	2		10
Highland	1	3	1	5	1	11
Lanarkshire			1		1	2
Lothian				3	2	5
Orkney		1		3		4
Shetland		1	1			2
Total	4	8	14	19	20	65

No substantiated applications for salaried posts have been rejected. Information about incomplete or provisional applications for such posts or inquiries about possible such postshas not been retained. There are current discussions with Highland and Greater Glasgow Primary Care NHS Trusts aboutthe possibility of further such posts in their areas.

Patients who lose access to NHS dental services should contact their local NHS board or Primary Care NHS Trust for advice on where to find their nearest NHS dental services, including what NHS emergency dental services may be available in their area.The majority of General Dental Practitioners are independent contractors. They are free to choose whether to join or remain on the dental list of an NHS board or Primary Care NHS Trust and whether to provide NHS treatment to individual patients.

When any NHS board or Primary Care NHS Trust considers that the existing general dental service provision is insufficient to meet the demands of the local population and no independent General Dental Practitioner is available to fill the gap, approval can be sought from Scottish ministers to appoint a salaried dentist.

The Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 provides Scottish ministers with powers to intervene to address poor performance by housing associations. These powers have been delegated to Communities Scotland. Where a housing association's performance is poor and it is failing to meet its obligations to tenants, Communities Scotland, on behalf of Scottish ministers, may:Remove members of the governing body of the housing association where their failure to act impedes the proper management of the organisation;Appoint persons to the governing body of the housing association for the purpose of improving the management of the organisation;Appoint a manager to the housing association, to ensure that the management of its affairs is of an appropriate standard, andInstruct a statutory inquiry into the affairs of the housing association, and (if required) a related Extraordinary Audit of its finances. If ministers conclude that there has been mismanagement or misconduct by the housing association, they have a further range of powers including directing the housing association to transfer its land to another registered landlord, following consultation with tenants.

The Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 provides Scottish ministers with the power to set standards for the performance of housing associations and other Registered Social Landlords. Performance Standards are developed and published jointly by Communities Scotland, the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations and COSLA.The current published performance standards set out the performance expectation that housing associations will identify and appraise the most important risks they face, and take a prudent approach to managing them. In meeting this standard, housing associations are expected to carry out regular risk appraisals, to identify key risks and have in place an appropriate risk management strategy. This should include contingency plans to respond to emergency events such as flooding.

The Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 provides Scottish ministers with various powers in relation to housing associations and these powers have been delegated to Communities Scotland. However, Communities Scotland has no landlord function and no specific power to offer housing accommodation. The responsibility for finding suitable decant accommodation for tenants lies with the housing association. If approached by a housing association where there is insufficient accommodation to house decanted housing association tenants, Communities Scotland would support and assist the housing association by liasing with strategic partners and other housing providers in the area concerned to establish if additional accommodation could be made available by another social landlord.

I understand that the Department of Public Health at NHS Borders has already undertaken a health risk assessment in consultation with Scottish Borders Housing Association.NHS Borders has also been involved in public meetings on this issue and discussions with the local authority and other relevant agencies have taken place.