Consultation hub

As part of our review of Potentially Vulnerable Areas (PVAs) for flood risk management in Scotland, we asked for your views on:

• Moving to community-scale PVAs.
• Designating specific communities as PVAs.
• Improving SEPA’s flood preparedness tools and resources.

• 64% of you agreed with our approach, describing it as sensible and fair. However, 10% of you disagreed, raising concerns about gaps in addressing surface water flooding and the accuracy of our flood data.
•  71% of you supported the move to community-scale PVAs, saying it made the designations clearer and more relevant locally. Some of you, however, expressed concerns about how this change might shift responsibilities for flood management.
• 52% of you agreed with the proposed designations for your local areas, but 33% disagreed, citing concerns about flood data accuracy, potential impacts on property sales, and insurance premiums.
• You told us that our flood preparedness resources need to be more user-friendly and accessible.

We discussed your feedback with local authorities and made several changes to community designations. We added Finavon and Kinbuck as new PVAs based on evidence received from the consultation. We expanded the boundaries for Bannockburn and Oban to better match their community boundaries. For Golspie, we updated the PVA description to clarify the flood risks. Additionally, we will use your feedback to improve SEPA’s flood tools, making them easier to understand and use. These changes will help us refine our flood risk management plans to meet community needs.

In January 2024, we sought your views on the type of authorisation that we propose to use for the authorisation of waste management, water, and industrial activities under the Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Regulations 2018 (EASR 2018). We also provided an explanation, where necessary, on why an activity requires the type of authorisation proposed. 

In the consultation, we asked two types of question: 

1. Those where we sought agreement for our proposed approach on the type, tier and wording of an activity and authorisation that would be required. 

2. Those where we were seeking views that will help us to develop future consultations on, for example, the wording of standard conditions. 

The consultation was open from 17 January 2024 to 12 April 2024.

In total, we received 63 consultation responses from stakeholders. 

Overall, the response was positive, with 83.7% of respondents agreeing to our proposed approach on the type, tier and wording of the activities and authorisations.

See our consultation summary for more details.

We have taken on board your comments and feedback and made some changes to our proposals. For example, to some activity thresholds and updating some activity descriptions to make them clearer. Where you fed back that further clarity was need, we have reviewed this and will integrated into future proposals that we will consult on in due course.

Read our Consultation digest for more information on the responses we received and what we have done in response.

We consulted in December on our outline proposals for the new, spatially based risk assessment framework for regulating the interaction between sea lice from marine finfish farms and wild Atlantic salmon.

The framework will be applied through the Water Environment (Controlled Activities) (Scotland) Regulations 2011.

We worked closely with scientists from Marine Scotland to develop the technical details of the proposed framework as well as with NatureScot and local planning authorities.

Input from stakeholder groups on the Salmon Interactions Working Group (finfish producers, fishery management organisations and environmental NGOs) was invaluable in helping shape and refine the framework during its development.

The proposed framework would be implemented by embedding it within our wider regulatory framework introduced in 2019, which already regulates all discharges from marine finfish farms to the water environment.

In total, we received consultation responses from 62 stakeholders.

We have published all stakeholder responses below, with personal information redacted.

We have read and considered all the responses and have made some changes to the framework as a result. We also held a series of workshops/engagement sessions in June 2022 to update stakeholders on changes to the framework and the implementation process that we were considering and take onboard any additional feedback and comments.

The main changes we intend to take forward are summarised below, alongside our full analysis of the consultation response.

• We have decided that sea trout should be included from the beginning of the framework. We will initially focus on providing protection of sea trout in Wild Salmon Protection Zones during the early sea phase of their lifecycle and the development of a sea trout monitoring programme that will provide information to help assess risk and further develop the regime.
   
• We will produce a further consultation in early 2023 detailing how the framework will operate in practice before implementing the regime. This consultation will include details of the choices we have made on controls that will apply and an assessment of the social and economic implications of the framework.
   
• To allow time for further consultation and development of risk screening models, we will now work towards starting to apply the framework to applications for proposed new farms and expansions of existing farms in the second half of 2023. However, it is important we get it right and, if necessary, we will take additional time if needed.