Fisheries management measures within Scottish Offshore Marine Protected Areas (MPAs): consultation

9. Scottish Government Consultation Process

Consultation is an essential part of the policymaking process. It gives us the opportunity to consider your opinion and expertise on a proposed area of work.

You can find all our consultations online at Citizen Space. 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.

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

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.

9.1 Why your views matter

The Scottish Government is committed to realising our vision of the marine environment being clean, healthy, safe, productive, diverse and managed to meet the long term needs of nature and people. Your responses will help to shape and inform how we do this.

Respondents should take into consideration the information provided within this document alongside any other knowledge or personal experiences that could be relevant. All opinions are welcome.

You are invited to answer all the questions. However, if you are unable to answer any question then please feel free to skip and move on to the next most relevant question.

The questions are asked in relation to each of the 20 sites and the two proposed fisheries management options. In addition, as described above, there are questions asked in relation to specific documents:

• Sustainability Appraisal (SA);
• Strategic Environmental Report (SEA);
• Socio- Economic Impact Assessment (SEIA);
• Draft Fisheries Assessments
• Partial Business Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA); and
• Partial Island Communities Impact Assessment (ICIA).

Consultation Part 1.

Questions 1-10 are general questions on the proposed measures and the supporting documents. Questions 12-30 then give the option to provide site specific comments.

Consultation Part 2.

Questions 32 – 33 are questions on the proposed amendment to the West of Scotland NCMPA boundary.

Please note for this consultation we have included a map based interface to support respondents in sharing their views. This is applicable for the site specific questions (12-31) where respondents can view and engage with a map of all sites and select sites of interest to view relevant information for that site. In all cases a text based alternative is available.