National islands plan: annual report - 2020

Island Communities Impact Assessments

As stipulated by the Islands (Scotland) Act 2018, the Island Communities Impact Assessments (Publication and Review of Decisions) (Scotland) Regulations 2020 were laid on 3 November and came into force on 23 December 2020. This means that the duty to carry out an Island Communities Impact Assessment (ICIA) became a legal requirement for relevant authorities (listed in the Act) from 23 December 2020 and requires Scottish Government and relevant authorities to take island issues into account when developing or reviewing policies, strategies or services.

The laying of these Regulations followed consultation with island communities, relevant authorities and local government partners on the proposed ICIA Guidance and Toolkit, which was published alongside the Regulations on the 23 of December 2020. This can be found online at www.gov.scot

We continue to support our colleagues across the Scottish Government as well as the relevant authorities in implementing the ICIA process. The table in Annex A provides an overview of some of the ICIAs that have been undertaken to date:

We have worked hard to operate in the spirit of the Islands (Scotland) Act 2018 since its introduction, where possible carrying out ICIAs for all of our new policies, strategies and services. ANNEX A details many of the ICIAs completed by the Scottish Government since the introduction of the Regulations. There are currently a number of new assessments in stream across a range of policy areas and we look forward to reporting on these in due course.