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The Scottish Government has provided £1.4 million to the Scottish Refugee Council for the expansion of its Refugee Integration Service including qualified helpline advisers and caseworkers. People arriving from Ukraine will also be able to access help and support on an ongoing basis from local authority resettlement officers, and they will be able to raise accommodation concerns directly to their housing association or local authority provider.

The Scottish Government has conducted extensive engagement and consultation involving a wide range of public, private and third sector organisations and individuals throughout its preparation of National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4), including three formal public consultation exercises.

Our Call for Ideas in 2020 attracted over 180 stakeholders to participate at our roadshow workshops, plus around 100 at drop in sessions and over 100 at events hosted by the Royal Town Planning Institute in Scotland on our behalf. Separately, we received written responses to the Call for Ideas from nearly 350 consultees. 35 contributors also provided think piece articles, and we held a variety of sessions and meetings with a range of stakeholders including the Scottish Youth Parliament. The Scottish Government’s Position Statement consultation later in 2020 attracted around 250 written responses. We also undertook extensive collaborative work with local authorities to support their preparation of indicative Regional Spatial Strategies, which have formed the basis of the spatial strategy in the draft NPF4.

The recent Draft NPF4 consultation exercise attracted over 750 formal consultation responses, and we also encouraged participation in discussions with a broad range of stakeholders. Our engagement programme included open invitation discussions on policy themes and action areas with around 265 stakeholders participating. We held a roundtable discussion on equalities, and again worked with the Royal Town Planning Institute in Scotland to deliver roundtable discussions where 45 people participated. We also worked with PAS who hosted events for community groups (over 50 participants) and with PlayScotland to gather perspectives from children and young people.

All engagement material, including consultation responses, event overviews and analysis of consultation responses in relation to both the Call for Ideas and the Position Statement are available at www.transformingplanning.scot. Materials for the Draft NPF4 consultation will be published in due course.

The Scottish Government’s draft National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4) set out how our approach to planning and development can achieve a net zero, sustainable Scotland by 2045. The draft NPF4 included green energy policy 19 which would support renewable energy development other than in National Parks and National Scenic Areas, subject to an assessment of their impacts on a case by case basis. Criteria for assessing proposals were also set out, including impacts on communities and individual dwellings.

The Parliamentary scrutiny period and public consultation on Draft National Planning Framework 4 has now concluded. Responses received are now being analysed and will inform the finalised NPF4, which will be submitted for Parliament’s approval, prior to adoption by Scottish Ministers.

In 2019 we published our National Planning Framework 3 (NPF3) Monitoring Report which reflected on progress across the 30 key actions and 14 national developments. NPF3 was published in 2014 so was not monitored against the 6 outcomes which were introduced by the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019.

We will work with key stakeholders to ensure monitoring for NPF4 is proportionate and effective.

The maximum amount of aid a farmer, crofter or agricultural contractor can receive is £20,000. Only one application and claim is allowed per business/Business Reference Number (BRN) per funding round. Grant awards will be based on 40% of the standard cost of each eligible scheme item. Businesses located in the Highlands and Islands (HIE area) will receive a higher grant rate of 50% (in acknowledgement of the higher cost involved with transporting goods to these areas). The standard cost and minimum specification for each item detailed in the scheme guidance is the maximum fixed price that the grant payment will be based on and there is no minimum amount specified.

As stated in our 2021 Manifesto, work on crofting law reform will be undertaken during this parliamentary term.

The Scottish Budget prevented a cliff edge return to full liability on 31 March 2022 for businesses in the retail, leisure and hospitality sectors, by continuing relief at 50% for the first three months of 2022-23, capped at £27,500 per ratepayer. This follows 100% relief for retail, hospitality and leisure premises for the past two years without any cap, which has saved Scottish businesses around £1.6 billion. We were the only Government to offer the relief at 100%, uncapped in both 2020-21 and 2021-22, when businesses needed it most. We have no current plans to alter the relief already being delivered for 2022-23.

The Scottish Budget also delivered another below-inflation increase to the poundage, providing the lowest poundage in the UK for the fourth year in a row, and ensuring that over 95% of non-domestic properties continue to be liable for a lower property tax rate than anywhere else in the UK. We have further maintained a competitive package of reliefs worth an estimated £802 million, including the UK’s most generous Small Business Bonus Scheme which takes over 111,000 properties out of rates altogether.

Improving equality and eliminating discrimination across Scotland is one of the six high level outcomes of National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4). In our draft NPF4, we sought to make clear that we want Scotland’s future places to support health, wellbeing and safety for all.

We are aware of concerns expressed by organisations such as The Royal National Institute for Blind People, suggesting that the policy on liveable places does not focus sufficiently on the needs of people with disabilities. We are currently considering the responses received to the consultation and how to make more explicit reference to a wider range of societal groups in the final version of NPF4, which will be presented to the Scottish Parliament for approval.

The Scottish Government has provided funding to local authorities to sustain and enhance resettlement teams and enable co-ordination of the third sector contribution to this work. We have made available more than £7 million to local authorities to support refurbishment of accommodation to support displaced people from Ukraine.

The package of enhancements identified by the project team for taking forward is currently being reviewed by Network Rail’s operations team for Scotland. It comprises signal enhancements, improvements to station approaches and specific capacity alterations to facilitate the mixed operation of faster and slower trains on the same route.