Action on hospital cleaning
New measures designed to ensure the highest standards of cleanliness in Scotland's hospitals were announced today.

They are:

• A compulsory Monitoring Framework for cleaning in hospitals using a traffic light alert system (red - under 70% compliance with cleanliness standards, amber - over 70% and green - over 90%);
• A National Education and Training Framework for Domestic Assistants, to make sure they get the education and training they need to enable them to carry out their work to the highest standard; and
• A new Housekeeper role, focusing on proactive reporting and communication in relation to cleaning and associated patient care issues.

The Ministerial Hospital Acquired Infection (HAI) Task Force established two working groups led by the Property and Environment Forum (PEF) to develop the tools outlined today.

The monitoring framework will enable Boards to monitor compliance with the National Cleaning Services Specification.  It will evaluate if cleaning procedures are being carried out effectively so that immediate and longer-term remedial action can be taken.  The data will be collected by PEF and the Executive will receive quarterly reports.

Full Story

Full Story

 

SECTION 3 - NOTES ON THIS WEEK’S CHAMBER BUSINESS

WEDNESDAY begins with Stage 3 of the Licensing (Scotland) Bill.

The Bill proposes to reform the licensing system to tackle Scotland’s drinking culture.  The key elements of the Bill are:

• Reforming outdated licensing laws;
• Tackling under-age drinking;
• Cracking down on binge drinking; and
• Involving communities.

The licensing regime will be modernised by:

• Establishing a clear, effective and mandatory national framework which will include standard national licence conditions covering key issues;

• Abolishing the outdated system of seven licences and statutory opening hours, replacing them with two new licences – personal and premises licence;

• A sensible "premises by premises" approach to opening hours, authorised by local Licensing Boards in line with the new licensing principles and coupled with a statutory presumption against 24 hour opening;

• Emphasis on mandatory training; and

• Tougher enforcement, with a wider range of sanctions and new Licensing Standards Officers (LSOs).

To tackle under-age drinking the Bill will:

• Introduce a requirement for all licensees to operate on a "no-proof, no-sale" basis;

• Introduce a requirement for on-sales premises who want to allow access by children to set out their plans in their operating plan for approval by the Board, with the emphasis on making family access easy to suitable premises; and

• Overhaul the under-age drinking offences, making it an offence for anyone to sell alcohol to a child anywhere,
  for anyone to purchase alcohol on behalf of a child, or for a child to buy or attempt to buy alcohol anywhere.

On binge drinking, the Bill provides for a crackdown on "irresponsible promotional activities" – a new policy which will ensure drinks have to be sold at the same price for at least 48 hours and ban specific irresponsible promotions which encourage binge and speed drinking.

And the legislation aims to protect communities by:

• Adopting a new approach to overprovision for all licensed premises, with Boards conducting overprovision assessments and blocking licences in saturated hot-spots;

• Allowing any person to object or make representations to a licence application, with no unnecessary definitions of "neighbour";

• Giving LSOs a key role of mediation between the licensed trade and the community to help sort out problems at local level; and

• Creating local forums with community representation with role of commenting on Board’s proposed policies.

To protect the unique nature of clubs and their place in communities, the Ministers would be provided with a regulatory power to exempt very small clubs, should they meet certain conditions set out in the Bill.  In general, this would mean that these clubs would be exempt from the requirement to have a premises manager and exemption from the “overprovision assessment” that would be carried out by local authority Licensing Boards.

---

The day concludes with a Member's Business debate on Scotland’s Social Housing Provision from Colin Fox (SSP).

THURSDAY morning begins with an Executive debate on Dentistry.

An overhaul of NHS dentistry services, with additional investment rising to £150 million within three years, was unveiled earlier this year.

It is designed to ensure that:

• Every child in Scotland will have access to dental care on starting nursery by March 2008 - in other words, an additional 50,000 children every year;

• Scotland will have the largest supervised toothbrushing programme in Europe with over 120,000 children receiving free toothbrushes and toothpaste and taking part in daily brushing at nurseries and schools across the country;

• Scotland will gain over 200 extra dentists by 2008;

• An additional 400,000 people will be registered with an NHS dentist by March 2008;

• We will introduce measures to make dental registration a continuing and not a time-limited system, with defined responsibilities for both dentists and patients;

• A range of recruitment and retention measures will be introduced, including a new bursary scheme for dental students, subject to a commitment to NHS dentistry for five years after graduation;

• Dental practices which meet agreed standards will qualify for a new rental (or equivalent) reimbursement scheme; and

• Red tape will be slashed in dental practice - 'Item of services' fee for dentists will be hugely simplified from 400+ items down to around 50.

The additional £150 million will be provided over three years. In the first year (2005-06) an extra £45 million to improve oral health and support NHS dental services will be provided. This will rise to £100 million in the second year (2006-07) and will build to £150 million of additional funding by 2008.

This announcement is a response to the Executive's two consultation exercises: Towards Better Oral Health in Children, published in September 2002 and Modernising NHS Dental Services in Scotland, published in November 2003.

This is followed by General Question Time and First Minister’s Question Time.

---

In the afternoon, following Themed Question Time (for the featured departments, see Section 1 above), there is an Executive debate on the Waste Strategy.

Section 92 of the Environment Act 1995 placed a duty on SEPA to produce a National Waste Strategy for Scotland.  The strategy makes provision for implementing article 7 of the EC Waste Framework Directive (75/442/EEC) as amended by the Council Directive (91/156/EC).  This requires member states to produce such plans.

The strategy outlines how Scotland can set about decreasing the amount of waste being sent to landfill and increase the amount being reused and recycled.  The NWS will help Scotland move towards more sustainable waste management practices, by reducing the quantity and hazardous state of the waste and increasing the amount of value recovered.

The purpose of the NWS is to:

• Provide a framework within which Scotland can reduce the amount of waste which it produces and deal with the waste which has been produced in more sustainable ways; and

• Provide the means by which the waste management planning requirements and targets in a number of European directives on waste are implemented in Scotland.

The day concludes with a Member's Business debate on Aboyne Maternity Unit from Mike Rumbles (LD).