Seas off St Kilda Special Protection Area: business and regulatory impact assessment

Consultation

Within Government

Consultation has been undertaken with policy colleagues within Marine Scotland, including aquaculture, nature conservation, marine renewables, fisheries and fresh water fisheries, and with Transport Scotland.

Historic Environment Scotland and the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency have also been consulted. Meetings were held with policy officials within these public bodies to discuss the development of these SPAs. We have also been working with Defra and other UK Departments on the join up between the Scottish MPA network, which includes SPAs, and the wider UK contribution to the OSPAR MPA network.

Public Consultation

A full public consultation took place in Autumn 2016. Further consultation took place in Autumn 2018 on at Network Assessment for the proposed set of sites and the SEA. An update to the SEA was consulted on in the summer of 2019.

Business

Routine updates are provided to the Marine Strategy Forum and are supplemented with bilateral meetings across sectors including the fishing industry, environmental NGOs, tourism and recreation, nature conservation, renewable energy, aquaculture, ports and harbours, defence and local community groups.

A National Workshop attended by a wide range of stakeholders was held in March 2016 to present the proposals and gather feedback on the proposed consultation package^[3].