Proposal to designate Red Rocks and Longay as a Marine Protected Area: consultation analysis

2 Description of the responses and respondents

2.1 This chapter provides information about the respondents to the consultation and the responses submitted.

Number of responses received

2.2 The consultation received a total of 63 responses. All but one of the responses were submitted through the Scottish Government's online consultation hub. The remaining response was submitted by email.

2.3 Two respondents submitted two responses. In one case the respondent submitted two different online responses, while in the other case the respondent submitted an online response and a separate offline response (by email) providing further comment on the consultation questions. In both cases, the different responses received were amalgamated (with one response retained and one removed), ensuring that the respondents were counted only once in the analysis.

2.4 Thus, the analysis presented in this report is based on 61 responses (63 submitted responses minus 2 removed responses). See Table 2.1.

About the respondents

2.5 Responses were received from 17 organisations and 44 individuals (see Table 2.2).

Organisational respondents

2.6 Table 2.3 below presents details of the types of organisations that responded to the consultation. The organisations fell into two main categories of (i) environmental organisations and community groups (accounting for around three-quarters of organisational respondents – 13 out of 17 organisations) and (ii) fishing industry bodies (accounting for the remaining quarter – 4 out of 17 organisations).

2.7 The environmental organisations group included international, national and local bodies; it also included organisations with a focus on environmental protection and nature conservation, as well as those with a broader interest in achieving 'sustainable' marine environments (i.e. ensuring protection of the natural environment alongside appropriately managed commercial and leisure activities). The fishing industry organisations comprised three organisations related to mobile fishing activities and one organisation related to static fishing activities. See also Annex 1 for a full list of organisational respondents.

Response rate to individual questions

2.8 Annex 2 provides details of the number (and percentage) of organisational and individual respondents who replied to each consultation question. The table shows a high level of response to all the closed questions – each of these was answered by 58 or more respondents (out of a total of 61). The response to the open questions was more varied with the number of respondents providing comments ranging from 24 at Question 7 to 49 at the open part of Question 1. At each of the open questions organisations were more likely than individuals to provide comments.