Fisheries Management Measures within Scottish Inshore Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and Proposed Priority Marine Feature (PMF) Management Areas - High level Site Summary Details and Potential Impacts of Proposed Fisheries Management Measures

3. Socio-economic Impacts

A Socio-Economic Impact Assessment (SEIA) was undertaken to estimate the social and economic effects of proposed management options for each site or area. The assessment considers potential costs to commercial fisheries, and the potential benefits and costs to society as a whole. This has been done for each NCMPA, SAC, and SPA. For the proposed PMF management areas this is done on a regional basis, using 7 of the SMRs.

Due to the nature of the proposed measures, the socio-economic impacts assessment focuses on impacts to commercial fisheries. The categories presented in this document to represent those impacts are Gross Value Added (GVA), employment, and loss in commercial fisheries landings.

To capture and assess impacts as fully as possible the direct, indirect, and induced effects have been assessed. This captures the direct impacts on the fisheries sector, as well as its supply chain (such as processing operations, restaurant and retail and wholesalers).

Gross Value Added (GVA) is a way to show the value of goods and services produced by an industry, sector, manufacturer, area, or region in an economy. It is the total value of output produced, without including the intermediary costs that went into producing them. For GVA impact over 20 years (2025 – 2044), Present Value figures at 2024 prices are used. Further information on this is available in the SEIA (section 3.5).

Employment impacts are reported as the average (mean) annual number of full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs affected over the 20-year assessment period. This includes both direct effects within the fishing sector and indirect effects within businesses in the upstream supply chain that support the sector. The estimates are not presented as a cumulative total because employment impacts are reported as an average annual effect over the assessment period. Summing annual impacts across the 20-year assessment period could therefore overstate the number of jobs affected, particularly where the same jobs may be affected from year to year. Employment impacts are estimated by converting changes in landings to changes in GVA and applying economic and employment multipliers and should therefore be regarded as indicative estimates rather than precise forecasts.

The range presented for the estimated socio-economic impacts reflects uncertainty regarding the extent to which fishing activity affected by the proposed measures may be displaced to alternative fishing grounds.

• The lower end of the range assumes that vessels are able to relocate fishing effort to nearby alternative fishing grounds, potentially within surrounding ICES rectangles, and take compensatory catches that reduce the overall impact.
• The upper end represents a worst-case scenario in which displaced fishing effort is unable to relocate to alternative fishing grounds, resulting in the loss of affected landings.

The SEIA also identifies potential consequences of displacement that have not been quantified, including increased steaming distances, increased fuel costs, fishing on less productive grounds, changes in vessel cost and revenue profiles, and increased competition for alternative fishing grounds.

There are also uncertainties in the data used for the assessment. In particular, activity by the under-10m fleet is based on self-reported FISH1 data, which records a single fishing location per vessel per day and may not fully represent the spatial distribution of fishing activity. Results are also sensitive to assumptions regarding displacement, industry adaptation and the use of sector-wide economic and employment multipliers.

Further information on the assessment methods and results, including local and regional economic impacts, social and distributional effects, and cumulative and in-combination impacts with other marine activities and developments, is provided in the SEIA.