Marine Fund Scotland 2026-27: general guidance notes

Monitoring and reporting

All projects that are successful in applying for grant funding from the Marine Fund

Scotland 2026-27, regardless of the level of funding, must be able to demonstrate (report) to the Scottish Government that they have met the outcomes they said they would deliver with their project, within the planned timescales, and how they have done this. This is usually in the form of written reports. If you are successful in applying for a grant, you will be provided with a template for this reporting.

All applicants should set out in their application the milestones, and where relevant any targets, that they will use during their project (and, where relevant, over the longer-term beyond the end of the grant) to monitor how well they are

progressing towards achieving the project’s overall objectives and outcomes. If you are successful in your application for grant funding, the milestones and targets you have set out to achieve will be included in your grant offer letter, alongside details of the schedule for reporting to us, as mentioned above. We will use progress against the milestones and targets to assess whether you have achieved your project’s objectives and outcomes.

The reporting arrangements will depend on the type of your project and will be proportionate to the value of your grant offer. As well as demonstrating progress in achieving objectives and outcomes, the project reporting must also include actual expenditure to date compared with profiled expenditure and any change to estimated expenditure for the financial year and/or the project as a whole, and the reasons for any such changes.

To help you with providing information about monitoring in your application, some examples of targets that may be relevant for your project are included at Annex E. Evaluation Support Scotland also has some useful free resources to help projects with planning for monitoring and evaluation.

Projects that are longer than 6 months must provide at least one progress report during the project (during the financial year 2026-27), as well as the end of project (end of grant) report.

After you have made your final grant claim and have submitted your end of grant report, you may be required to submit annual post-project monitoring updates for up to a further five years. This is to monitor any lasting impacts beyond the period of the grant. You should set out any longer-term objectives/outcomes beyond the period of the grant in your application.

Any requirements and timescales for post-project monitoring will be set out in the grant conditions in your grant offer letter. If you have set milestones beyond the end of your project’s grant funding period, you should report against those milestones, ideally once you reach a milestone within that year.

As set out in the ‘Key information’ section of these Guidance notes, submitting any required progress and end of project reports and complying with any required post- project monitoring requirements will be formal contractual conditions of your grant and will be set out in your grant offer letter. It will be your responsibility as a grant recipient to ensure that the reporting and monitoring requirements for your project are met.

Applicants making an application relating to fishing will also be asked to report information on the fisheries stocks that they currently target.

Applicants making an application relating to testing novel engine technologies to support climate change mitigation may also be asked to provide insights/data that can be used to guide decisions in future years of the Marine Fund Scotland on funding for engine replacements/modifications to support climate change mitigation.

If during your project you want to change any of the targets or milestones against which your progress in achieving your objectives/outcomes is monitored, please contact us at MFS@gov.scot. You will need to set out a clear reason for any changes and may need to provide supporting evidence. Any proposed changes to the targets or milestones for your project will be subject to the written agreement of the Scottish Ministers.

Additional rules and obligations

This section sets out additional rules and obligations for those applying to the Marine Fund Scotland 2026-27. These are:

• it is essential that applicants are open, honest and accurate when making applications to the Marine Fund Scotland 2026-27. It is a criminal offence to supply information in the application, supporting documents or in any

additional information or documentation provided following a request from us, knowing it to be false or not believing it to be true, and you may be liable to a fine or imprisonment if you do so.

• the Scottish Ministers (which, for this purpose, includes officials within the Scottish Government’s Marine Scotland Directorate) will scrutinise your application and may from time to time conduct random checks on your application and the supporting documents, including contacting proposed suppliers. In the event of irregularities, Scottish Ministers may in their absolute discretion refuse applications.
• in the event that false or inaccurate information is discovered, the Scottish Ministers will give consideration to investigating the matter further and may take such enforcement action, including reporting the matter to Police Scotland or any other law enforcement agency, as they consider appropriate. In such circumstances the Scottish Ministers may also seek to recover any grant paid.
• if your project is approved and a grant offered, specific contractual grant conditions will apply and these will be specified in the grant offer letter in accordance with the Scheme established by the 2022 Regulations. These grant conditions are not set out fully in these General Guidance notes and you must refer to any grant offer letter received for the full grant conditions applicable to any offer of grant. Any breach of these grant conditions may lead to recovery of any grant paid, and if necessary, the Scottish Ministers may seek recovery through appropriate criminal or civil action.
• if you are offered a grant and the grant is not used for the purpose for which it was granted, the Scottish Ministers may seek recovery of any grant paid through appropriate criminal or civil action.
• it is the responsibility of each applicant and/or their organisation (as appropriate) to ensure that the project for which they are applying for funding complies with all relevant health and safety legislation, any other project- specific safety requirements, and all other relevant laws.
• if your proposed project involves modification to a vessel you must contact the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) to determine the effects of the modifications on the vessel’s safety and stability, before submitting an application to Marine Fund Scotland. See the statutory guidance MIN 593 (F) Amendment 1 Vessel modifications - pre-approval by MCA for further details. Please confirm the date on which you contacted the MCA in the documents accompanying your Marine Fund Scotland application. All installation and/or modification work undertaken by the owner/skipper of the vessel must meet all relevant MCA safety/stability requirements, whether funded by Marine Fund Scotland grant funding or otherwise. Responsibility for any work undertaken which renders a vessel unstable or unsafe remains entirely with the owner/skipper of the vessel.
• where there is a close connection between an applicant (or their organisation)

or one of their close relatives or a partner(s) in a project and a company or companies that will supply goods and services to that project, you must disclose this to us and the eligibility of the project costs associated with said company or companies shall be entirely at our discretion.

• receipt of funding from another public source may affect your/your organisation’s ability to access Marine Fund Scotland funding. We may withhold, withdraw or require grant funds to be repaid in whole or in part depending on the source, value, and conditions of other public funding. Any application for Marine Fund Scotland funding must disclose the source(s) and amount(s) of any other funding awarded in connection with the project in question. If any further awards of public funding are made in relation to a project after the related application has been submitted to us, the applicant (or their organisation) must inform us as soon as reasonably possible after this award.