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We are delighted with the progress on the reopening of the DigitalBoost Fund and will meet the 100 days deadline that we have set. This will be a national fund supporting businesses to increase their digital capacity and capabilities and we would encourage businesses in the Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley area to apply once it reopens. We will work with our enterprise support partner, Business Gateway, and delivery partners, LESL (Lancashire Enterprise Services Limited), to successfully administer and deliver this fund.

The use of the local authority discretionary funding was entirely at the discretion of local authorities and we do not currently hold data on applications by or allocations to individual type of business.

The Scottish Government regularly publishes statistics and management information relating to its Covid-19 business grants on its website which can be found at Coronavirus (COVID-19): business support funding statistics - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

The Scottish Government provides a wide range of Covid-19 recovery funding support for town centres in the Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley area.

To support sustained longer term renewal for our towns, villages and cities we have established a Place Based Investment Programme, backed with £325 million capital investment over five years from 2021-22. The allocation for 2021-22 to East Ayrshire Council is £1.31m. The programme will help to link and align place based funding initiatives and progress our ambitions for town centres, community led regeneration and 20 minute neighbourhoods. It builds on the £34 million economic stimulus for regeneration and towns and other funding specifically for town centres, smaller settlements and Business Improvement Districts delivered in 2020-21.

To further support local businesses and promote keeping local spend local we launched the next phase of the Scotland Loves Local (SLL) campaign on 5 July. The £10m SLL Programme includes a new national platform for the SLL loyalty card scheme that will help revitalise town centres and high streets hit by the pandemic.

Since the start of the pandemic, businesses including those in town centres have directly benefitted from £3.6 billion in support. This includes over £13 million, through the Strategic Framework Business Fund and Restart Grant, to businesses in East Ayrshire (as at 25 June 2021) and we continue to work closely with councils to ensure businesses subject to restrictions for a longer period of time remain supported.

Grants of up to £7,500 for retailers and up to £19,500 for hospitality and leisure businesses were paid in April to help businesses, including town centre businesses, re-open. These one-off re-start grants replaced the Strategic Framework Business Fund payments made between November and March and provided more money up front to help with the costs of re-opening. Data on business support funding and other local authority support schemes are available .

Local authorities were also empowered to support local businesses through the Discretionary Fund, with over £1.7 million awarded to businesses in East Ayrshire from that Fund.

We have extended 100% Non-Domestic Rates relief for all retail, leisure and hospitality premises for all of 2021-22 – this is a more generous package than the equivalent rates reliefs available in other UK nations. This relief benefited over 500 businesses in East Ayrshire saving them over £11 million in 2020-21, according to the latest data available.

Boundaries Scotland’s final proposals have been submitted and Scottish Ministers now have a legal duty to lay regulations giving effect to the proposals as soon as is practicably possible.

The Scottish Elections (Reform) Act 2020 removed ministerial discretion to modify or reject Boundaries Scotland’s proposals. However the regulations will now be subject to affirmative procedure in the Scottish Parliament. This gives Parliament an enhanced role in scrutinizing the Boundary Commission’s proposals and brings the procedure into line with that already in place for Scottish Parliament constituency boundaries.

The regulations are due to be laid in the Scottish Parliament in late August. The lead committee will take evidence from witnesses ahead of a debate on the motion to approve the regulations.

The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government. Information relating to meetings between NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Infection Prevention and Control Team and the Health Protection Team, is held by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. The Scottish Government are only notified of incidents when they are reported by the NHS National Services Scotland, Antimicrobial Resistance and Healthcare Associated Infection Service, by means of the Outbreak Reporting System .

From April 2010 until September 2020, there have been 808 revisional mesh procedures to either remove or oversew transvaginal mesh, inserted for stress urinary incontinence, pelvic organ prolapse or another unknown reason.

Transport Scotland has published guidance to enable people to travel as safely as possible during the Covid-19 pandemic. The guidance includes car sharing and is applicable to all protection levels. On 22 June 2021, the First Minister confirmed the intention that, provided the data supports it, all of Scotland would move to protection level 0 from 19 July and that all legal requirements for outdoor physical distancing would be lifted from this date. The First Minister also confirmed the intention that, data permitting, Scotland would move Beyond Level 0 from 9 August, on which date all legal requirements for physical distancing in indoor settings will be lifted. Transport Scotland is reviewing its guidance to consider what changes may be required in line with the updated Strategic Framework and move Beyond Level 0. The guidance is available at:

The information requested is not centrally held by Scottish Government, as aspergillus and Cryptococcus are not part of the mandatory surveillance policy. As stated in the National IPC Manual, Appendix 13 alert organism surveillance should be guided by local Board intelligence.

To help free up capacity during the initial coronavirus outbreak, Health Boards were asked to postpone non-urgent operations and procedures to allow vital NHS staff and resources to be redeployed to support the response to the pandemic. All Health Boards were written to in March 2020 and asked to take a structured approach to scaling down all non-urgent elective procedures, making clear that urgent, maternity and vital cancer services should remain.

From May 2020, while NHS Boards needed to maintain capacity for the priorities of COVID-19 as well as continuing to provide urgent, emergency, maternity care and support the care home sector, they started to use spare capacity to safely and incrementally restore services which had been paused. In restarting paused services, each Health Board, whilst ensuring their approach was consistent with national guidance, made their own decision on which services could safely and effectively be resumed; as informed by local circumstances; and both local and national clinical priorities.

National screening programmes restarted over summer 2020 in a phased way with an initial focus on higher risk screening participants, with all adult screening programmes now running again, including those for breast, bowel and cervical cancer.

Remobilising and supporting the NHS remains one of the Scottish Government’s top priorities and the NHS Recovery Plan will be published shortly. This will set out how we will continue to support patients to receive the highest quality of care; safely and effectively expanding NHS capacity whilst ensuring operational resilience.

Published data on performance is available at

To date, over 75 expressions of interest have been submitted by local authorities. Zero Waste Scotland is currently working with local authorities to develop detailed bids. These will be reviewed in line with the fund’s governance arrangements before a decision is made on initial funding awards.

The Scottish Government has worked in partnership with COSLA, SOLACE and Zero Waste Scotland to develop arrangements for the fund. More information on the aims, scope and distribution of the fund is available at:

In line with , the table outlines the distribution of the £70 million fund over the 5 year period: