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The Scottish Government recognises the difficulties facing Scotland’s cities and businesses as a result of the global pandemic as highlighted in the Centre for Cities report. The Scottish Government has provided more than £4.4 billion of business support since March 2020. This includes COVID-19 non-domestic rates reliefs which have saved businesses around £1.6bn in reduced rates bills since 1 April 2020. In addition last year, we awarded £2m directly to our cities through the City Centre Recovery Fund, to kick-start their recovery.

The Omicron variant in late 2021 further impacted on city centre recovery and has exacerbated the economic challenges faced by our city centres and their businesses. As such, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance announced an additional £3m of funding this financial year through the City Centre Recovery Fund on 10 February. These monies will support all seven cities build sustainable recovery for their centres and their businesses and will take forward the priorities of the City Centre Recovery Task Force.

Work to improve the sustainability of Scotland’s deer management systems, including recommendations made by the Deer Working Group, will be taken forward under the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy.

Priorities will be broadly split across four streams: legislation; regulation; incentives; and operational delivery. The work stream focusing on incentives will include proposals to mainstream deer management into existing schemes, and scope for any new schemes.

We will lay out further details of this work in due course.

As the 2021-22 season is ongoing, NatureScot do not yet have a complete picture of the number of deer culled and so it is not possible to give an accurate assessment of the impact of Covid-19 restrictions. NatureScot will publish cull return data for 2021-22 once the season is over and returns have been received.

Work to increase standardisation since the Scottish Government’s Infrastructure Investment Plan for Scotland 2021-22 to 2025-26 was published, can be seen in the announced Invitation to Tender (17 December 2021) for two new ferries for Islay and the continuing work as part of the Small Vessel Replacement Programme (SVRP) that will see up to 7 vessels replaced on the west coast as part of Phase 1 of the programme.

Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited (CMAL) are taking forward the SVRP and are currently working with the appointed naval architects (Navalue) who are providing consultancy services for the concept design stage as well as investigating and evaluating the feasibility of designing low emission ferries to be in line with the Scottish Government climate change and standardisation commitments.

We also continue to support the vessel resilience funding that can be spent on replacing obsolete equipment on existing vessels.

We continue to engage extensively with the Arran Ferry Committee on timetable matters through the twice yearly timetable consultation process, which has recently concluded with regard to the Winter 2022 timetable, and additionally through the Ardrossan Task Force which met most recently on 23 February 2022.

In the coming months CalMac Ferries Ltd will undertake a public consultation regarding service continuity plans for Arran ferry services when they temporarily relocate to Troon.

We continue to engage extensively with CalMac Ferries Ltd on a regular basis concerning timetables, and through the twice yearly timetable consultation process.

As part of the Ardrossan project; Transport Scotland continues to meet with and provide support to CalMac Ferries Ltd in the development of service continuity plans for the Arran ferry service when it temporarily relocates to Troon.

A small number of contracts between ScotRail Trains Ltd. and Abellio is expected to be in place from 1 April to ensure the continuity of rail services in Scotland from 1 April 2022.

In particular, a contract for the continued use of the Abellio Shared Services Centre will maintain employment for staff in its Glasgow office.

The Homelessness Prevention and Strategy Group is jointly chaired by COSLA’s Community Wellbeing Spokesperson, Councillor Kelly Parry and I. We share responsibility for chairing meetings and they and HPSG members have collective responsibility for agreeing the work programme and achieving the goals in the Ending Homelessness Together action plan.

Since May 2021, the Homelessness Prevention and Strategy Group (HPSG) has met on one occasion, 5 November 2021. Meetings take place once every quarter, subject to parliamentary and local government business, with the next meeting scheduled for March.

A meeting scheduled for June 2021 was cancelled following the Scottish Parliament election to allow time to determine portfolio responsibilities. The meeting scheduled for September 2021 was postponed until November 2021 to accommodate parliamentary business and ensure the co-chair from COSLA was available. The next meeting, which was scheduled to take place in February 2022, has been postponed until March 2022 to accommodate parliamentary business and ensure the co-chair from COSLA was available.

The delivery of the Ending Homelessness Together action plan is on track as demonstrated in our annual progress report, which was laid in Parliament in October 2021. The plan has been welcomed by stakeholders, including HPSG members, who are responsible for overseeing the development and delivery of the plan.

We have not asked local authorities to undercut doors in schools, nor was £300,000 provided to them specifically for these purposes.

My letter to the Education, Children and Young People Committee setting out the example scenario was not guidance, and has not been issued to local authorities. It was a response to a request from the Committee to provide more detail on how costings had been arrived at. The letter stated:

“In order to calculate the £5m schools/ELC ventilation fund, we have assumed an example set of remedial measures which could be taken for each problematic space although this will vary depending on local decisions.”

and

“ It is very important to note that these costs will of course vary significantly in practice, as the precise remedial measures used in each problematic space should be informed by local circumstances and expert assessment by local authority teams .”

Local authorities are fully aware that they should undertake any remedial work in line with Scottish Government guidance on ventilation and expert input. Our guidance already makes clear that when implementing any Covid-safety measures, local authorities must continue to adhere to legal obligations with regard to health and safety, including fire safety. It is of course for local authorities as duty holders to ensure appropriate consultation with all relevant authorities when undertaking works in school buildings.