Seòmar agus comataidhean

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-10619 on‎ 26 September 2022. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-10619 on‎ 26 September 2022. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

We continue to carefully consider the report and recommendations made by the previous Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee as regards regional marine planning and are working to finalise our formal response, which will be published this Autumn.

Official annual restoration totals are only available from 2012-13 when the Scottish Government began funding Peatland ACTION, the national peatland restoration programme delivered by NatureScot. However, data from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology is available prior to this time and around 60,000 hectares of degraded peatland have been put on the road to recovery since 1990.

We are committed to further increasing the annual area of peatland and have committed £250 million to restoring 250,000 hectares of degraded peatlands by 2030.

Scotland is providing a place of safety to more displaced people per head of population than any other part of the UK. The Scottish Government’s priority is to ensure that displaced people from Ukraine are able to stay in appropriate temporary accommodation and get the right support ahead of moving into safe, sustainable longer-term accommodation. We are working in partnership with local government to identifying suitable long term accommodation and boost supply so we can support people whilst they are in Scotland. As part of this we have established the Ukraine Longer Term Resettlement Fund, backed by up to £50 million of funding for councils and Registered Social Landlords to help bring accommodation into use and boost the housing supply for those fleeing conflict in Ukraine.

On 22 September, the Scottish Government published its first summary of the latest Scotland-level data and information on people displaced by the war in Ukraine coming to Scotland through the Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme visa schemes which provides detail on host numbers: Key points - Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme in Scotland: statistics - gov.scot.

Decisions on non-domestic rates, including the poundage and any reliefs, are generally considered in the context of the Scottish Budget in line with other government priorities.

Deer management is currently carried out across land holdings of varying size from 10Ha to over 10,000Ha. The extent of the deer management and any required collaboration is more dependent on the species and land type rather than any minimum size. For ‘territorial’ species such as roe deer the scale of management will often be at the individual farm unit; whereas for open hill red deer, that range across multiple large properties, the management scale expands to Deer Management Groups that cover many thousands of hectares.

The Code of Practice on Deer Management prescribes to everybody who owns or manages wild deer on someone else’s land (irrespective of the size of that land holding), how they should deliver sustainable deer management. A review of compliance with the Deer Code published 2019 concluded that where it was relevant to them, a majority of owner-occupiers, across varying land holdings, had undertaken actions to meet each of the themes outlined in the Deer Code. NatureScot, in their role as Scotland’s deer authority, work with a range of partners, including the Association of Deer Management Groups, local deer management groups and individual land managers to develop effective planning and deliver deer management across Scotland.

We are working closely with local authorities and with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) and doing all we can to speed up the matching process and increase the numbers of displaced people moving into host accommodation.

On 22 September, the Scottish Government published its first summary of the latest Scotland-level data and information on people displaced by the war in Ukraine coming to Scotland through the Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme visa schemes, including data on the number of displaced people in welcome accommodation: Key points - Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme in Scotland: statistics - gov.scot.

We have committed £250 million to restoring 250,000 hectares of degraded peatlands by 2030.

In 2021-22, the Scottish Government provided £15.58 million to our delivery partners to support peatland restoration across Scotland.

In our 2021-22 Programme for Government, the Scottish Government pledged to take forward work to develop and consult on a ban on the sale of peat-related gardening products as part of our wider commitment to phase out the use of peat in horticulture. This aligns with the Welsh and UK governments’ proposal, as stated in their joint consultation, to end the retail sale of peat and we support their approach. We chose to continue with our plans to launch our own consultation, designed to gather the information we need to form a plan honed to the specific needs of Scotland and its people.