Scottish National Investment Bank: consultation report

2. About the respondents and responses

This section presents information about the respondents and type of responses received by the consultation. It also describes the way in which responses were received and provides a brief description of the campaign response facilitated by Friends of the Earth Scotland.

How responses were received

Responses to this consultation were received online, via the Scottish Government's Consultation Hub and directly to the Bank's email inbox.

Submission through an organised campaign

One campaign group, Friends of the Earth Scotland, co-ordinated responses among their members and supporters. These campaign responses were based on a standard text provided by the campaign organiser and were submitted to the Scottish Government directly to the Bank's email inbox. Alternatively, respondents were given the option to edit the standard campaign response and add their own comments.

Number of responses included

Altogether, 1,108 responses were submitted to the consultation. 335 responses were received through the Scottish Government's online consultation portal, the Consultation Hub, with a further 20 responses submitted to the Bank's mailbox. The remaining 753 responses were submitted through the Friends of the Earth Scotland campaign response. Of these 753 responses, 709 use the standard template and are identical. The remaining 44 have some form of variation, and are analysed separately in Appendix A.

For the purposes of this consultation analysis, the 20 mailbox responses and the 44 Friends of the Earth responses that varied from the standard form were uploaded into the Consultation Hub, resulting in a total of 399 responses within the quantitative analysis.

45 responses (including Friends of the Earth Scotland) were received from organisations. The categories of the respondents are analysed in Table 1 below, while a list of all those organisations that submitted a response is included in Appendix C.

Table 1: Respondent Profile

Key stakeholder groups were targeted for response to the consultation and highlighted to relevant government departments who were asked to publicise the consultation among their contacts. Organisations, e.g. the third sector, business organisations and enterprise agencies, utilised their existing sources of communication to increase the response rate among the stakeholders they represent. Blogs, websites and newsletters were utilised and a number of media articles were published which referenced the consultation.

Responses to individual questions

As noted above, there were 1,108 responses to the consultation. Valid responses were considered on a question by question basis as summarised in sections 4 – 11 of this report. However, not all respondents answered all of the questions and not all of the comments made within the response were directly relevant to that question. Some also used inappropriate language.

There was a moderation of the responses received and any which were defamatory have been excluded for the purpose of this analysis. Where individuals provided answers which were not relevant to that specific question, yet closely related to another question within the consultation, we have sought to capture these opinions within the relevant and appropriate questions.

Specific feedback on the consultation cited that certain questions were harder to answer than others. Question 2 was found to be overly technical as some respondents noted that they did not understand a number of the terms used. Question 7 was also considered excessively technical as some respondents noted that they did not have sufficient specialist knowledge to provide an adequate response.