Partial Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment - Amendment of the West of Scotland Nature Conservation Marine Protected Area (NCMPA) site boundary

Costs

Option 1: Do nothing

This option is not proposed to create any additional costs to the sectors and groups outlined above as there would be no change to the current site designation. In the absence of being able to effectively manage and enforce management measures to conserve the identified features, there may be associated future economic and societal costs in terms of increased marine habitat and biodiversity degradation.

Option 2: Amend site boundary of West of Scotland MPA under the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009

Costs have been evaluated based on the comparison of proposed boundary amendment of the MPA to the current designation of the MPA. The are no proposed additional costs expected under the option of the boundary amendments the only change will be to the site boundary, which will be reduced by only 2.14%.

Commercial fisheries

There are no proposed additional costs to commercial fisheries under the option of amending the site boundary of the West of Scotland MPA.

Amendment of the site is unlikely to result in a loss of displacement of current (and future) output as the current management measures restricting activity remains the same. Therefore, it is not proposed to reduce or increase the Gross Value Added (GVA) generated by the sector or to have knock on effects on the GVA generated by those industries that supply commercial fishing vessels.

To note separate BRIAs will be published for the site to account for proposed fisheries management measures within offshore MPAs.

Telecommunication cables

No proposed additional costs to telecommunications cables under the option of redesignating the site boundary of the West of Scotland MPA.

Oil and Gas

No proposed additional costs to Oil and Gas sector under the option of redesignating the site boundary of the West of Scotland MPA.

Military Interest

No proposed additional costs related to the need for Ministry of Defence (MoD) to amend and update its Marine Environment and Sustainability Tool (MESAT) (and other MoD environment tools) together with subsequent costs to maintain and comply with these updates.

Public sector

The decision to amend the site boundary of West of Scotland MPA is unlikely to result in additional costs being incurred by the public sector in the following broad areas:

• Site monitoring
• Compliance and enforcement
• Regulatory and advisory costs associated with licensing decisions