Marine Plan consultation – what next?

Following a successful 12-week consultation on the draft Orkney Islands Regional Marine Plan, the Council’s Marine Planning Team will now be carefully considering the raft of comments received and updating the draft plan. 

An extensive consultation was launched at the beginning of August, which included ten in-person drop-in events – six of which were on the ferry-linked isles – two online events, schools, targeted business interviews, and the chance to submit written comments. 

Hundreds of conversations have been had on the Regional Marine Plan and a summary of the main questions and answers can be viewed here: https://www.orkney.gov.uk/media/dg4nzxs4/consultation-faqs.pdf 

Marine Planner, Danny Morris, said: “Interest from the community has been very high, with many in-depth discussions held about the Regional Marine Plan and more general marine topics. We believe this was a huge success and we are delighted with how much has been achieved in such a short time. Thank you to everyone that came to see us, we had a wonderful time catching up with folk.” 

The consultation closed on 25 October and the OIC’s Marine Planning Team will now give careful consideration to all the comments, amend the Plan accordingly, and put together a document detailing how the comments received have been addressed and what has been changed in the plan. 

The Regional Marine Plan will then be submitted to the Scottish Government’s Marine Directorate for approval, and any final changes made, before being considered for endorsement by OIC Elected Members at Committee. At that point, the Plan will need to be considered by Scottish Ministers for their adoption. This process will begin as soon as the consultation closes. The team are keen to progress the adoption of the plan so that they can start implementation as soon as possible. 

The team have recently launched a webpage https://www.orkney.gov.uk/Service-Directory/D/marine-planning.htm to allow new stakeholders and interested parties to subscribe to their newsletter. This can be done at https://www.orkney.gov.uk/Service-Directory/D/subscribe.htm 

If you have any queries, please contact the Marine Planning Team via Marine.planning@orkney.gov.uk 

Important Links 

Orkney Islands Regional Marine Plan – consultation draft www.orkney.gov.uk/marine-plan-consultation 

Orkney Islands Marine Region: Finfish Farming Spatial Guidance – consultation draft: https://www.orkney.gov.uk/media/fyib4rag/finfish-farming-spatial-guidance-consultationdraft.pdf 

Orkney Islands Marine Region: Finfish Farming Spatial Guidance - Consultation Draft interactive maps: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/3ec2b843d89346e3ac0e2f476b4568bd