Local development planning - regulations and guidance consultation: part A - introduction

Handling Your Response

22. If you respond using the consultation hub, you will be directed to the About You page before submitting your response. Please indicate how you wish your response to be handled and, in particular, whether you are content for your response to be published. If you ask for your response not to be published, we will regard it as confidential, and will treat it accordingly.

23. 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 requests made to it under the Act for information relating to responses made to this consultation exercise.

24. If you are unable to respond via Citizen Space, please complete and return the Respondent Information Form.

25. To find out how we handle your personal data, please see our privacy policy.

Next Steps in the Process

26. 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 on our consultation hub. If you use the consultation hub to respond, you will receive a copy of your response via email.

27. 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. An analysis report will also be made available.

Comments and Complaints

28. If you have any comments about how this consultation exercise has been conducted, please send them to the contact address above or to LDPRegsandGuidance@gov.scot.

Scottish Government Consultation Process

29. 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.

30. You can find all our consultations online on our consultation hub. 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.

31. 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.

32. 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.