Crown Estate: a consultation on the long-term management of the Crown Estate in Scotland

Responding to this Consultation

We are inviting responses to this consultation by 29 March 2017.

Please respond to this consultation using the Scottish Government's consultation platform, Citizen Space. You can view and respond to this consultation online at https://consult.scotland.gov.uk/crown-estate-strategy-unit/long-term-management-of-the-crown-estate.

You can save and return to your responses while the consultation is still open. Please ensure that consultation responses are submitted before the closing date of 29 March 2017.

If you are unable to respond online, please complete the Respondent Information Form (see "Handling your Response" below) to: CrownEstate.Consultation@gov.scot.

You can respond online on the Scottish Government website.

Alternatively, you can respond by email by sending your response to: CrownEstate.Consultation@gov.scot.

You can also respond in writing, by sending your responses to the address below. Please do not forget to include your Respondent Information Form, your response cannot be accepted without it. The Respondent Information Form is set out in Annex C.

If you have any enquiries please send them to:

CrownEstate.Consultation@gov.scot or contact Kevin Farquharson on 0131 244 7854. We would be grateful if you would use the consultation questions ( Annex B) provided or would clearly indicate in your response which questions or parts of the consultation paper you are responding to, as this will aid our analysis of the responses received. Other formats of this consultation can be made available on request, please contact the Crown Estate Strategy Unit.

Handling your response

If you respond using Citizen Space ( http://consult.scotland.gov.uk/), you will be directed to the Respondent Information Form. Please indicate how you wish your response to be handled and, in particular, whether you are happy for your response to be published.

If you are unable to respond via Citizen Space, please complete and return the Respondent Information Form included in this document. If you ask for your response not to be published, we will regard it as confidential, and we will treat it accordingly.

All respondents should be aware that the Scottish Government is subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and would, therefore, have to consider any request made to it under the Act for information relating to responses made to this consultation exercise.

Next steps in the process

Where respondents have given permission for their response to be made public, and after we have checked that they contain no potentially defamatory material, responses will be made available to the public at http://consult.scotland.gov.uk. If you use Citizen Space to respond, you will receive a copy of your response via email.

Following the closing date, all responses will be analysed and considered along with any other available evidence to help us. Responses will be published where we have been given permission to do so.

Scottish Government consultation process

Consultation is an essential part of the policy-making process. It gives us the opportunity to consider your opinion and expertise on a proposed area of work.

You can find all our consultations online at: http://consult.scotland.gov.uk. Each consultation details the issues under consideration, as well as a way for you to give us your views, either online, by email or by post.

Responses will be analysed and used as part of the decision-making process, along with a range of other available information and evidence. We will publish a report of this analysis for every consultation. Depending on the nature of the consultation exercise, the responses received may:

• indicate the need for policy development or review;
• inform the development of a particular policy;
• help decisions to be made between alternative policy proposals;
• be used to finalise legislation before it is implemented.

While details of particular circumstances described in a response to a consultation exercise may usefully inform the policy process, consultation exercises cannot address individual concerns and comments, which should be directed to the relevant public body.