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The Scottish Government have continued to ensure that the sites of standalone ATMs in rural areas are exempt from rating. Other ATMs may benefit from as much as a 100% rates relief through the Small Business Bonus Scheme.

Under the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, each local Council has wide-raging powers to create rates reliefs to reflect local needs. This may apply to a sole business, sector or area. The relief may be an adaptation of an existing national relief scheme or a unique standalone scheme.

Although the UK Government retains legislative and regulatory responsibility for banking and financial services, the Scottish Government stands ready to work constructively with banks, regulators and the UK Government to ensure that the ability to freely and easily access cash is maintained. The Scottish Government has repeatedly requested that the UK Government appoint a regulator with sole responsibility for cash infrastructure.

The High Level Group on Planning Performance aims to improve the performance of the planning system for all types of development. It does not have a workstream which focuses specifically on the processing of windfarm applications. As highlighted in the response to S6W-02645 on 14 September 2021, the resourcing and performance of the planning system remain key priorities, and we recently recommenced work looking at increasing the financial resources available to planning authorities through changes to the planning fees regime.

The latest planning statistics published in July 2021 indicate that timescales for major applications for electricity generation are 10 weeks faster than the Scottish average for all types of major development. With regards to local applications for electricity generation, although timescales are 4 weeks slower than the Scottish average for all non-householder applications, over 52% were determined within the statutory timescale. The average decision time for local electricity generation developments has varied substantially over the last seven years but prior to 2020-21 the overall trend showed a decrease in average decision time.

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 remain committed to delivering the work of the Victims Taskforce, which is anticipated to reconvene before the end of 2021.

The information requested is not held centrally.

Guidance for local authorities on establishing control areas and the reasons and evidence they need is set out in chapter 2 of Planning circular 01/2021: short-term let control areas .

Covid Support Grant Restart (CSG-R) funding for bus is available to support eligible organisations, such as bus operators and local transport authorities, which are running local registered bus services, and are able to increase service mileage up to 95% of pre COVID levels. Where a local transport authority (LTA) runs local bus services directly it is eligible for CSG-R funding for those services. To date, the only local authority in receipt of CSG-R funding is Scottish Borders Council.

The amount of funding each operator – including eligible local authorities – will receive depends on the actual gap between the costs of running the services and revenue received over the funding period and so is not known at this point. A condition of the funding is that participating operators are required to cooperate with LTAs in planning services and to take steps to respond positively and quickly to reasonable requests from LTAs to amend service patterns, hours or levels of provision.

We are working collaboratively with COSLA and partners to prepare a response to the review of the Town Centre Action Plan which will be published later this year.

A joint interim response with COSLA was published in March 2021 and can be found at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/interim-joint-response-report-recommendations-review-town-centre-action-plan-new-future-scotlands-town-centres/.

The Scottish Government continues to be committed to improving the lives of autistic people in Scotland. We published our Learning/Intellectual Disabilities and Autism: Towards Transformation Plan in March 2021, which builds on existing autism and learning disabilities strategies. The plan looks at the actions needed to shape supports, services and attitudes to ensure that the human rights of autistic people and people with learning/intellectual disabilities are respected and protected and that they are empowered to live their lives, the same as everyone else.

We do not directly fund assistance dogs for autistic people. You may find it useful to know that the Scottish Government was approached and does fund a project run by Alzheimer’s Scotland that pioneers the use of assistance dogs for people with dementia.

Whilst the Scottish Government has overall responsibility for health and social care policy in Scotland, it is for the regional health & social care partnerships to determine the level of services that are required to meet local needs and to arrange an appropriate and suitable range of services to meet these local needs, as mandated under statute in the Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act. Local Authorities may be able to say whether they consider assistance dogs as part of their package of support options.

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Interim Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

The following table provides the number of SPS issued mobile phone handsets that have been confiscated at HMP & YOI Grampian, each month, since implementation in July 2020:

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-03027 on  1 October 2021. 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