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Work is taking placewith Information Services Division of National Services Scotland to gather and validatethe necessary data. Audiology waiting time information will be published in thenear future once this is completed.

It is the responsibilityof NHS boards to determine the number and skill mix of staff needed to deliver servicesin their area. Each NHS board is responsible for the planning and provision of NHSpodiatry services in its area, based on an assessment of local need and in accordancewith local and national priorities.

Each NHS board isresponsible for the planning and provision of NHS podiatry services in its area,based on an assessment of local need and in accordance with local and national priorities.Access to NHS podiatry services is a matter of clinical decision in the light of the health needs of individual patients.

Information on thework of Allied Health Professionals (AHP) is not collected in sufficient detailto answer this specific question on podiatry services. However, NHSScotland InformationServices Division have recently undertaken a census of AHP workload, the resultsof which are published at:

http://www.isdscotland.org/isd/data-development-dev-info.jsp?pContentID=1359&p_applic=CCC&p_service=Content.show&.

The report includesfigures for podiatrists and chiropodists combined.

NHS boards are requiredto ensure that the services they provide meet the standards set for the NHS. NHSQuality Improvement Scotland has responsibility for this area and published standardsfor NHSScotland are available at .In addition podiatristsproviding NHS services are required to meet standards set by professional and regulatorybodies. The Health Professions Council provides information on existing standardsfor podiatrists at  www.hpc-uk.org/publications/standards/Standards_of_Proficiency_Chiropodists.pdf,and further information is available from the Society of Chiropodists and Podiatristsat .

Each NHS board isresponsible for the planning and provision of NHS podiatry services in its area,based on an assessment of local need and in accordance with local and national priorities.Access to NHS podiatry services is a matter of clinical decision in the light of the health needs of individual patients.

In addition, Scotland’s Free Personal Care policy provides people with supportwith daily tasks, including basic toe nail cutting which can be undertaken withoutthe intervention of an NHS health care professional.

Overall capacity inthe pre-school sector is not monitored on a national basis. Uptake of pre-schooleducation places is reported annually through the Pre-school and Childcare Statistics.The current high-level of uptake suggests that there are no overall problems withcapacity in the sector. The lateststatistics are available at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2006/09/13155926/0and in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 40411).

Planning of pre-schoolservices at a local level is a matter for local authorities, who have a duty toprovide every three and four-year-old with a pre-school education place. In orderto do this effectively they must plan the provision of pre-school education to ensurethat places are available in the areas where they are needed.

The manifesto commitmentto deliver additional pre-school education relates to the level of entitlement ratherthan the number of places. The first step of an increase for all nursery provisionto 475 hours is not based on the creation of any new places. Options for implementingthe commitment in full are being developed and impact on capacity in the sectorwill be carefully considered.

The Cabinet Secretaryfor Health and Wellbeing has publicly made clear the Scottish Government’s oppositionon the use of public money to assist the private sector compete with the NHS.

The national private sector call-off contract, put in place underthe audiology modernisation project to support NHS boards in reducing waiting times,recently ended. In the meantime, the Allied Health Professionals contract, whichruns until May 2008, allows NHS boards to employ temporary locum audiologists toassist in reducing waiting times.

Ministers are in dialoguewith a range of stakeholders to gather evidence and views on how we can use thestrategic spending review to set plans that will enable us to fulfil our purposeand achieve our strategic objectives. Social care and support will be part of thatconsideration.

The Scottish governmentprovides local authorities with block grant for their core revenue servicesthrough the core local government finance settlement. A needs-based methodology(otherwise known as grant aided expenditure (GAE)) is used to determine the allocationof that block grant. As GAE is a component used in distributing the total blockgrant that the Scottish Government provides to local government, it is not abudget or a spending target. It is for each local authority to decide how bestto allocate the resulting overall block grant across all their services, basedon local needs and priorities.

The GAEallocations for each local authority for pre‑school services in 2007‑08is shown in the following table.

Local Authority Area	Nursery Teaching Staff (£ Million)	Pre-School Education (£ Million)
Aberdeen City	0.931	6.822
Aberdeenshire	1.281	9.959
Angus	0.563	3.775
Argyll and Bute	0.416	3.069
Clackmannanshire	0.256	1.634
Dumfries and Galloway	0.666	5.319
Dundee City	0.664	4.698
East Ayrshire	0.617	4.031
East Dunbartonshire	0.536	3.291
East Lothian	0.504	3.197
East Renfrewshire	0.506	3.175
Edinburgh, City of	2.045	13.686
Eilean Siar	0.121	1.051
Falkirk	0.788	4.980
Fife	1.897	11.896
Glasgow City	2.913	19.259
Highland	1.080	8.649
Inverclyde	0.402	2.773
Midlothian	0.457	3.016
Moray	0.441	3.249
North Ayrshire	0.727	4.556
North Lanarkshire	1.893	11.575
Orkney	0.087	0.764
Perth and Kinross	0.719	5.307
Renfrewshire	0.924	5.795
Scottish Borders	0.597	4.606
Shetland	0.119	1.157
South Ayrshire	0.521	3.271
South Lanarkshire	1.595	10.002
Stirling	0.461	3.326
West Dunbartonshire	0.472	3.018
West Lothian	1.015	6.303
Scotland	26.215	177.195

In addition thereare other relevant GAE allocations which go wider than pre-school services. Theseinclude Sure Start (£59.912 million), special education (£272.688 million) and childcarestrategy (£44.556 million).

Since audiology servicesare not consultant-led, or defined as a speciality, and are a sub-specialty ofear, nose and throat, they do not fall under the current 18 week target of the ScottishGovernment. However, the Scottish Government is committed to improving servicesfor the benefit of patients, ispleased that a number of NHSScotland boards have met, and in some cases exceeded,the 26 week target from referral to fitting set by the Audiology Modernisation ProjectBoard and will continue to measureboards’ progress towards modernisation of the service allowing us to identify regionalvariations in service delivery and standards.

Where waiting timesremain unacceptably high, the Scottish Government continues to work directly withthe boards involved to help improve the situation as a matter of urgency.