National Good Food Nation Plan: Island Communities Impact Assessment

Consultation

As part of the public consultation on the draft national Good Food Nation Plan, we also conducted a range of in-person workshops to complement the online consultation via Citizen Space.

Two of 10 in person consultation workshops were conducted on islands, one in Orkney and one in South Uist. A further workshop was held in Oban, which might have included attendees from the Inner Hebrides or other islands with ferry links to Oban. However, we are unable to confirm this as we did not collect any personal data at these events.

In addition, the five online workshops were open to anyone across Scotland with an interest in the national Good Food Nation Plan or general programme of work. Attendance information and personal data was not collected at these events, so we are unable to confirm if members of island communities participated in these.

We produced Gaelic translations of summaries of the consultation documents and the respondent information form. We also actively offered the services of Gaelic translators at the in-person workshop in South Uist to accommodate any accessibility needs of island populations. This service was requested by two participants. We will continue to provide Gaelic summaries of key documents as our work on the Good Food Nation continues.

The questions for the workshops, both online and in-person, were kept consistent across all workshops however, the introductory questions allowed for the particular local context to come through in the participants’ responses.

These questions were:

• What would life look like for you in a Good Food Nation?
• What would your neighbourhood or workplace look like / smell like / feel like?
• Do these Outcomes describe Scotland as a Good Food Nation? Is anything controversial? Is anything missing?

The consultation identified concerns that are unique to island communities in relation to the food system in general, in line with the evidence highlighted in step two above.

These concerns were around:

• Stability of supply chains
• Availability of a choice of food
• Availability of fresh produce
• The cost of food
• Availability of locally produced food

In relation to the content of the draft Plan, participants’ views at the island workshops were aligned with the key themes identified in the wider consultation.