The Act: Section by Section Section 14: Co-operation
55.Section 14 requires health boards to co-operate with each other, and with special health boards, the Common Services Agency and HIS, in planning and providing the examination service and the retention service. The purpose of the co-operation is to secure adequate provision of the examination service and the retention service across Scotland and to secure continuous improvement in the delivery of these services. The precise nature of the co-operation is not specified but could include, for example, co-operation on training, development of information for victims and the sharing of best practice. It could also include working across health board boundaries.
56.Section 12J(1) of the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978 (“the 1978 Act”) requires health boards to co-operate with one another, and with special health boards and the Common Services Agency in relation to the planning and provision of services under that Act – subsection (1) of section 14 is the equivalent of that duty in relation to the services to be provided under this Act. Subsections (2) and (3) of section 12J provide further details in relation to such co-operation, providing, for example, that a health board can undertake to provide (or secure the provision of) services as respects the area of another health board and do anything for the purposes of providing such services which it could do as respects its own area. These subsections (and subsection (4) of section 12J) are applied for the purposes of subsection (1) of section 14 of this Act (subject to one minor modification25). This would allow, for example, a number of health boards to agree that one of them would enter into a contract for the provision of out-of-hours services across all of the boards’ areas.
57.The Act provides a platform for wider multi-agency working (for example the development of multi-agency facilities), but no amendments require to be made to policing, local authority or other legislation for this to happen.