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We encourage any owner of a traditional building to explore the best available methods of repair and maintenance for their properties, including shop-owners and we welcome local shopfront improvement schemes which seek to increase the attractiveness and conserve the distinctiveness of high streets.

Draft National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4) recognises the importance of our historic environment in defining the character of our places, and in promoting a sense of place, belonging and cultural identity.

Draft NPF4 also encourages Distinctive Places. Universal Policy 6, on Design, Quality and Place, sets out the six qualities of successful places. One of these is ‘distinctive’ which refers to attention to local architectural styles, with designs reinforcing identity, by drawing on historic environment assets, as well as examining building types, colours and materials and acknowledging the sense of place, heritage and identity.

Shopfront requirements around design, colour and materials are more appropriately covered in local guidance, to reflect and reinforce local styles and character of places.

Local planning authorities are best placed to advise property owners regarding the necessary consents for any restoration or renovation. It is important to ensure these consents remain appropriate and not unnecessarily restrictive. This maximises the ability of the local economy to flourish, while we continue to carefully preserve the distinctive characteristics of local spaces.

The then Housing Minister, Mr Stewart, wrote to the UK Government in March 2021 to raise this issue, but the response received from HM Treasury suggested this would be prohibitively expensive to VAT receipts. Whilst cost is clearly a consideration, we believe this alone should not dictate policy decisions and that the changes suggested would help communities retain existing - often historic - buildings. This would also contribute towards our net-zero ambitions by reducing the emissions caused by demolition and new construction, which benefits from lower VAT rates.

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.