West of Scotland Nature Conservation Marine Protected Area (NCMPA) site boundary amendment: final business and regulatory impact assessment

Public Sector Costs

A benefit to amending the site boundary will be that it would aid compliance and enforcement without incurring additional costs by simplifying the enforcement requirements currently for the site and any enforcement of future fisheries management measures.

Costs

Amend site boundary of West of Scotland MPA under the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009

Costs have been evaluated based on the comparison of proposed boundary amendment of the MPA to the current designation of the MPA. The are no proposed additional costs expected under the boundary amendment. The only change will be to the site boundary, which will be reduced by only 2.14%.

Commercial fisheries

There are no proposed additional costs to commercial fisheries under amending the site boundary of the West of Scotland MPA.

Amendment of the site is unlikely to result in a loss of displacement of current (and future) output as the current management measures restricting activity remains the same. Therefore, it is not proposed to reduce or increase the Gross Value Added (GVA) generated by the sector or to have knock on effects on the GVA generated by those industries that supply commercial fishing vessels.

A separate (partial) BRIA has been published for the site to account for proposed fisheries management measures within offshore MPAs and can be found here: Partial Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (Northern North Sea) - Fisheries Management Measures within Scottish Offshore Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) - gov.scot. A final version will be published when final management measures have been put in place.

Telecommunication cables

There are no proposed additional costs to telecommunications cables under amending the site boundary of the West of Scotland MPA.

Oil and Gas

There are no proposed additional costs to Oil and Gas sector under amending the site boundary of the West of Scotland MPA.

Military Interest

There are no proposed additional costs related to the need for Ministry of Defence (MoD) to amend and update its Marine Environment and Sustainability Tool (MESAT) (and other MoD environment tools) together with subsequent costs to maintain and comply with these updates.

Public sector

The decision to amend the site boundary of West of Scotland MPA is unlikely to result in additional costs being incurred by the public sector in the following broad areas:

• Site monitoring
• Compliance and enforcement
• Regulatory and advisory costs associated with licensing decisions