Scottish Crown Estate: strategic management plan

Reporting, monitoring and review

158. This is the first Strategic Management Plan for the Scottish Crown Estate. Scottish Ministers are required to review the Plan within five years. A review may either result in a revised Plan being prepared (subject to consultation, laying and publication requirements) as set out in the Act or laying of a statement in the Scottish Parliament indicating we consider that the Plan should not be revised.

159. The Scottish Government will monitor implementation of the Plan, delivery of the objectives, priorities and policies and alignment with wider objectives, priorities and policies. The Scottish Government will work with Crown Estate Scotland, the Stakeholder Advisory Group and prospective managers of Scottish Crown Estate assets to ensure that appropriate monitoring is undertaken alongside wider monitoring under the NPF and annual reports and other reports containing information on the performance and outcomes achieved in the management of the Scottish Crown Estate.

160. The Act provides for a national framework to govern management of the assets at the national and local level. This framework includes national reporting and accounting arrangements and these include targets and key performance indicators which will guide and inform monitoring of the Strategic Management Plan. These will be kept under review and developed over the lifetime of the plan particularly to improve our approaches to estimating and monitoring environmental benefits.

161. The monitoring and review of the Plan will be informed by the delivery of targets in Crown Estate Scotland’s Corporate Plan and any Management Plans prepared by other managers. An interim review of the monitoring framework for the Strategic Management Plan will be undertaken after year 3 in order to look for opportunities to enhance monitoring arrangements and ensure that arrangements are in place beyond the three year period of the current corporate plan. This should also consider the potential to better align the timescales for future Strategic Management Plans with the timescale for plans required for a Scottish Crown Estate manager.

162. Crown Estate Scotland’s Corporate Plan and any other Management Plans should set out how the manager plans to manage the asset under their management over the next three years. The Plan should:

• Set out the manager’s objectives for the period;
• The activities the manager proposes to undertake during that period;
• Any risks associated with those activities;
• Outcomes against which the achievement of the objectives may be assessed;
• How the manager proposes to maintain and seek to enhance the value of the assets under their management; and
• Set out whether the manager proposes to dispose of any Scottish Crown Estate asset during that period and, if so, how the manager proposes to use any proceeds of the disposal.

163. Annual Reports ensure openness and transparency and provide an assessment of how a manager has performed against the objectives. As such, Annual Reports and Management Plans will be one of the sources of information about the performance of the managers of the assets.

164. Monitoring is an integral part of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and a proposed monitoring framework has been developed to track the significant environmental effects of implementing the Plans to address data gaps identified in the SEA. The responses received on the SEA report will be reviewed with a view to incorporating them in the monitoring framework for the Strategic Management Plan and this will involve engagement with the interests outlined above and others as appropriate.