Consultation on amending Scottish hate crime legislation: analysis of responses

Annex 1: Consultation events

In order to promote the consultation, the Scottish Government organised a series of events across the country. These ‘awareness workshops’ were designed to give individuals and organisations an opportunity to find out more about the consultation and discuss the key recommendations and proposals.

Eleven workshops were held between December 2018 and February 2019 at the following locations: Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Galashiels, Glasgow (two workshops), Inverness, Lerwick, Lockerbie, Stirling and Stornoway. The workshops were advertised on the consultation website and promoted via Eventbrite. 

The workshops were open to all members of the public, with a total of around 400 people participating in the events. 

The workshops consisted of presentations on the consultation, a video on the background of the consultation and hate crime, group discussions on key topics, and an opportunity for questions, and group discussion. The aim was to:

• Inform attendees about the Hate Crime consultation
• Allow attendees to discuss the key issues
• Provide attendees with an opportunity to highlight any impacts / risks
• Gather feedback as part of the public consultation.

Attendees were provided with a handout in advance of the workshop which included information on the format of the events, a summary of the recommendations and consultation questions, and details of how to access the consultation.  

Summary reports of each of the eleven events (prepared by the Scottish Government consultation team) have been considered as part of the analysis presented in this report.

The consultation team also developed facilitator packs and provided these to stakeholders to enable them to run their own events prior to responding to the consultation. In addition to the eleven Scottish Government events described above, the following stakeholder groups also held their own consultation events: BEMIS, Community Justice Scotland, deafscotland, Fife Equality Network, Law Society of Scotland and YouthLink Scotland.