'Delivering Scotland's Air Departure Tax': consultation analysis report

2. Overview of Consultation and Engagement

Consultation

The consultation invited responses to a range of open and closed questions covering the proposed Highlands and Islands exemption, the Private Jet Supplement, operational and future policy considerations and impacts. For all closed questions, respondents had an opportunity to offer comments to support their views.

The consultation received a total of 64 responses, 24 from individuals and 40 from organisations. A full list of organisational respondents is set out in Annex B. Some responses were received in summarised form through Citizen Space and emailed to the ADT mailbox in full. These responses have been combined and treated as one response per organisation for the purposes of analysis. One individual submitted two responses, and these responses were also combined. This left a total of 61 responses from the original 64 received, and it is this total (61) that is reflected in the analysis of this report.

However, not all respondents answered each question, causing the number of responses analysed for individual questions to be lower than the total number of respondents. The number of respondents to each question has been specified where appropriate. Percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number throughout this analysis and therefore may not always total 100% when presented in tables.

Responses are published in full on the Scottish Government’s consultation webpage where permission has been given at: https://consult.gov.scot/tax/air-departure-tax/.

The responses have been categorised by respondent type as follows:

Across the respondent types, 14 responses were from Highlands and Islands organisations and individuals, making up 23% of responses. In addition to analysis by respondent type during Section A: Highlands and Islands Exemption Proposal, views by Highlands and Islands stakeholders have been isolated and analysed where helpful.

Responses were received both through the Citizen Space platform and via email submissions. A number of the responses received by email did not respond to the questions directly and provided their comments in a statement-style format. All statement-style responses were analysed individually under the most directly relevant consultation question.

The consultation responses were analysed by Scottish Government officials, with comments allocated to certain themes under each question. The analysis is presented in Part 3 of this report as a question-by-question analysis, separated into four sections reflecting the consultation’s structure (the Highlands and Islands Exemption, Private Jet Supplement, Operational and Future Policy Considerations, and Impact Assessments).

The analysis presents the key themes raised by the responses to each question and provides illustrative quotes from respondents where relevant. Where comments were raised only by a singular respondent and did not relate to any other theme found, and where comments did not relate to the specific question or to ADT, these have not been set out in detail.