The Scottish Government was involved in the review of the UK good practice document, BS 8300: 2009, which addresses delivery of inclusive buildings, to provide design guidance on Changing Places toilets.

The presence of this information within a well-established UK reference document will assist both in developing awareness of the need for such facilities and in the design of practical solutions.

The toilet facilities in Scottish Government buildings are fully compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) standards that apply to existing properties. As the core Scottish Government does not have any buildings to which the public have a general right of access, the Changing Places standard is not applicable to our buildings. However, all building services within the Scottish Government are kept under review to ensure that they meet the needs of staff and visitors.

The SPCB provides a Changing Places facility which is accessible to all passholders and visitors in the Holyrood complex. In 2007, the SPCB received a national award under the Changing Places Category for Scotland for achieving this standard. It is located in the garden lobby area and visitors can be escorted from the public area if they wish to access the facility.

The parliament''s Accessible guide for disabled visitors leaflet provides full details on how to access the facility.

I refer the member to the question S3W-21384 on 11 March 2009. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

The Scottish Government will consult members of The same as you? Implementation Group, the Users and Carers Group and other interested stakeholders later this year to inform the scope and remit of the research proposal.

Research already undertaken has shown that direct (patient to patient) and indirect (via contaminated environment or third party) contact represents the main routes of transmission of Clostridium difficile.

During October to December 2008, creditor-led petitions for bankruptcy were lodged by the following categories of creditors:

Councils	HM Revenue and Customs	Businesses	Private Individuals1	Money Lenders2	Other	Total
600	213	191	74	36	4	1,118

Notes:

1. May include creditors from other categories where a named individual has been cited as the pursuer in the Scottish Court Service''s electronic Case Management System.

2. Banks, building societies and credit card companies.

The information provided has been collected by the Scottish Court Service and cannot be searched electronically. A manual trawl of the 1,118 cases was undertaken in order to provide the figures quoted above, but more detailed information giving the names of individual creditors, where allowed under the Data Protection Act, could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

Not all petitions presented to the courts result in award of bankruptcy.

The Accountant in Bankruptcy has never reported on numbers of petitions for bankruptcy as she does not collate this information herself.

The Accountant in Bankruptcy does, however, collate and report on the number of awards of bankruptcy following both petitions to the court and debtor applications considered by the accountant herself. Information on awards of bankruptcy can be found on the website at www.aib.gov.uk in the annual report or in the quarterly Insolvency Statistics press release.

The last quarter for which published data is available is January “ March 2008. There were 267 homelessness applications in Argyll and Bute during this quarter and 203 cases assessed as homeless. In West Dunbartonshire, 587 applications were made and 243 cases assessed as homeless during this quarter.

Data for the following two quarters (April to September 2008) is scheduled to be published on 17 March 2009.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-21375 on 6 March 2009. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.