Open Space Strategies and Play Sufficiency Assessments Regulations: impact assessments

The Assessment Approach

The Scottish Government's Planning & Architecture Division is leading on the preparation of the draft Regulations, and adopted a collaborative approach in developing the proposals and carrying out the impact assessments.

The new duties on Open Space Strategies and Play Sufficiency Assessments have the potential to impact on everyone living in Scotland. So to inform the drafting, we have carried out engagement with a broad range of stakeholders around the detailed provisions for the secondary legislation prior to this formal consultation.

In developing the proposals, Scottish Government officials worked with a Joint OSSPSA Working Group with representatives from a range of external stakeholders, including representative interests from the open space and play sectors, agencies; and from local authorities officers representing their councils and Heads of Planning Scotland, and the Improvement Service. The OSSPSA Working Group has acted as a sounding board in preparing the proposals for both sets of draft Regulations.

The engagement with stakeholders included a screening of the 'Mountains for All' EQIA video^[2], to highlight the need to consider equality issues when helping develop and commenting on the proposals.

We also looked at published evidence available and gathered so far under the protected characteristics as listed within the Equality Act 2010. This included evidence from existing large national and UK surveys: including the Scottish Household Survey, these were primarily in relation to health and access to open space. Data and qualitative information has also been gathered from evidence arising from stakeholder workshops, discussions and other research and publications. A summary of activities undertaken is provided within the EQIA (Appendix A).

This report presents partial or interim impact assessments. Due to the differing reporting requirements, we are presenting the outputs in separate appendices.

To ensure that there are no unintended consequences from the draft Regulations, during the public consultation period we intend to carry out targeted engagement with children and young people. A tailored questionnaire will be used to seek the views of children and young people from different age groups, backgrounds and parts of the country (urban / rural / island and more deprived / less deprived communities), including with groups for children and young people with additional support needs, and those from a BAME background, refugees / asylum seekers, LGBTQ, and young carers.

Questions have been included as part of the consultation to invite views on the draft provisions, plus the content of the partial impact assessments, and whether there are any additional sources of information or evidence that would assist in finalising the assessments.

Where gaps in evidence may be highlighted in the consultation responses, we will seek to identify evidence to fill these gaps, and may engage with relevant representative organisations. The final assessments will be further developed, building on the interim assessments, and will take into account the views of stakeholders through the feedback gathered from the public consultation.

The Scottish Government will produce full and final assessments to accompany the final Regulations.