Consultation for Fees for Regulation of Adult Placement Services by the Scottish Commission For the Regulation of Care

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Dear Colleague

FEES FOR REGULATION OF ADULT PLACEMENT SERVICES BY THE SCOTTISH COMMISSION FOR THE REGULATION OF CARE

I wrote to you in November 2005 inviting you to comment on the consultation paper on the proposals for the regulation of adult placement services by the Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care (the Care Commission). That consultation paper advised that we would be consulting separately on the fees which will be charged by the Care Commission for regulating these services.

I am now writing to invite you to comment on the proposals set out in Annex A below for maximum fees to be set by Scottish Ministers for regulating adult placement services. Comments are invited by 6 March 2006. Please send your response to:

standardsandsponsorship@scotland.gsi.gov.uk or

Jane Martin

Care Standards and Sponsorship Branch

Community Care Division

Scottish Executive Health Department

2-E(s), St Andrew's House

Regent Road

Edinburgh

EH1 3DW

Please complete the form at Annex B to indicate how you wish your response to be handled.

If you have any questions, please contact Jane Martin on 0131 244 3515.

This consultation, and all other SE consultation exercises, can be viewed online at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations. You can telephone Freephone 0800 77 1234 to find out where your nearest public internet access point is.

The Scottish Executive now has an email alert system for SE consultations ( SEconsult). This system allows stakeholder individuals and organisations to register and receive a weekly email containing details of all new consultations (including web links). This complements, but in no way replaces, SE distribution lists. It is designed to allow stakeholders to keep up to date with all SE consultation activity, and to be alerted at the earliest opportunity to those of most interest. We would encourage you to register.

Access to consultation responses

We will make all responses available to the public in the Scottish Executive Library by Spring 2006 and on the Scottish Executive consultation web pa ges by the same date, unless confidentiality is requested. All responses not marked confidential will be checked for potentially defamatory material before being logged in the library.

Yours sincerely

MRS LINDA GREGSON

Care Standards and Sponsorship Branch

ANNEX A

Background

1. The Care Commission was established under the Regulation of Care (Scotland) Act 2001 (the Act) to regulate the wide range of care services defined in section 2 of that Act. Regulation began on 1 April 2002 and most of the definitions in section 2 have now been commenced. Regulation of the remainder continues to be phased in, allowing the Care Commission to take on the additional work gradually rather than all at once.

2. For adult placement services the proposal is to regulate services from sometime soon after 1 April 2006. It is necessary to set maximum fees which the Care Commission will charge providers for regulating these services.

3. In terms of section 24(1) of the Regulation of Care (Scotland) Act 2001 (the Act), Scottish Ministers prescribe the maximum registration fees which may be imposed by the Care Commission. The Care Commission imposes fees under section 24(1) for:

(a) applications for registration and for cancellation of registration;

(b) the annual continuation of registration;

(c) variation or removal of a condition of registration; and

(d) issue of a new certificate.

4. Ministers announced in December 2005 that fees for cancellation of registration and those for (c) and (d) above would be set by the Care Commission at nil for financial year 2006-07. They also announced that the fees for applications for registration and annual continuation of registration for most services already regulated would remain at the levels set for 2005/06.

Fee structure proposals

5. The proposal for adult placement service fees is to set them according to the number of people employed in providing and managing the adult placement service. Three categories proposed are small, medium and other. These are defined as

· small adult placement service - a service which does not employ more than three whole-time equivalent persons to provide and manage the service;

• medium adult placement service - a service which employs more than three whole-time equivalent persons but does not employ more than fifteen whole time equivalent persons to provide and manage the service; and
• other adult placement service - a service which employs more than fifteen whole-time equivalent persons to provide and manage the service

6. The proposed fee for each category is shown below. They have been set taking account of the Care Commission's experience of regulating care services since 2002.

7. The proposed fees are based on an estimate of the time needed by the Care Commission to regulate these services. However, because the Commission does not yet have any direct experience of registering or inspecting these services the fees may be subject to change in future years in light of the Care Commission's actual experience of regulating the sector. Any shortfall between the fees and the actual cost of regulation in the year 2006/07 will be met centrally by the Scottish Executive.

Maximum Fees which may be imposed by the Care Commission in respect of adult placement services in 2006-07

Please send any responces to StandardsandSponsorship@scotland.gsi.gov.uk