Draft Sectoral Marine Plans for Offshore Renewable Energy in Scottish Waters: Consultation Paper

Responding to this Consultation Paper

We are inviting written responses to this consultation paper by Wednesday 13th November 2013. In order to aid our analysis of the responses received, we would be grateful if you would use the consultation questionnaire provided or could clearly indicate in your response which questions or parts of the consultation paper you are responding to.

Please send your response with the completed Respondent Information Form (see "Handling your Response" below) to:

offshorerenewableenergy@scotland.gsi.gov.uk

or

Offshore Renewables Team (CRE 1642)
Marine Scotland
1A(S), Victoria Quay
Edinburgh
EH6 6QQ

If you have any queries, including requests for hard copies or alternative formats, please contact Kirsty Howaniec on +44(0)300 244 1235 or using the e-mail address above.

This consultation, and all other Scottish Government consultation exercises, can be viewed on the consultation web pages of the Scottish Government website at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations.

The Scottish Government has an email alert system for consultations, http://register.scotland.gov.uk This system allows stakeholders, individuals and organisations to register and receive a weekly email containing details of all new consultations (including web links). It complements, but in no way replaces SG distribution lists, and is designed to allow stakeholders to keep up to date with all SG consultation activity, and therefore be alerted at the earliest opportunity to those of most interest. We would encourage you to register.

Handling your response

We need to know how you wish your response to be handled and, in particular, whether you are happy for your response to be made public. Please complete and return the Respondent Information Form which forms part of the consultation questionnaire provided as this will ensure that we treat your response appropriately. If you ask for your response not to be published we will regard it as confidential, and we will treat it accordingly.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 are 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 in the Scottish Government Library (see the attached Respondent Information Form). These will be made available to the public in the Scottish Government Library and on the Scottish Government consultation web pages by 18 December 2013. You can make arrangements to view responses by contacting the SG Library on 0131 244 4552. Responses can be copied and sent to you, but a charge may be made for this service.

What happens next?

Following the closing date, all responses will be analysed and considered along with any other available evidence to help us with the preparations of the Final Draft Plans. We will review the Draft Plans (taking account of responses received) and revised as appropriate. We aim to issue a report on this consultation process by December 2013 and if required will undertake further assessment and consultation in light of any significant revisions to the Draft Plans. Final Draft Plans will then be presented to Scottish Ministers' to be formally adopted in early 2014. Following adoption, a Post-Adoption Statement will be prepared to document the process and demonstrate how issues raised during consultation have been addressed by the final Plans. Once the final Plan has been published, the monitoring framework set out within the SEA Environmental Report will be expanded to incorporate further detail on monitoring of key technical issues, and will be used to assess the impacts of the implementation of the Plans. At this stage, it is proposed that the Plans are reviewed every two years.

Comments and complaints

If you have any comments or complaints about how this consultation exercise has been conducted, please mark your correspondence "complaint" and send them to:

Offshore Renewables Team (CRE 1642)
Marine Scotland
1A(S), Victoria Quay
Edinburgh
EH6 6QQ

offshorerenewableenergy@scotland.gsi.gov.uk