Regulation of fish and shellfish farm deposits: consultation

Background

There is now growing interest within the aquaculture sector to develop farms beyond 3 nautical miles from the coast, with developments in technology making farms in this region feasible. This type of innovative development has the potential to reduce environmental interactions and to support fish health and welfare in line with the aims of our Vision for Sustainable Aquaculture.

The Scottish Government is committed to clarifying the consenting process for aquaculture between 3-12 nautical miles, with the intention to ensure a consistent approach to the regulation and consenting of aquaculture development and activity across the 0-12 nautical mile zone.

Current regulation requires fish and shellfish farming development from 3 – 12 nautical miles to acquire a Crown Estate Scotland lease, planning permission, a marine licence for discharges and/ or equipment (where applicable to the development type) and registration under an aquaculture production business authorisation.

Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) are the responsible authority for the regulation of fish farm environmental discharges between 0-3 nautical miles, and Marine Directorate - Licensing Operations Team (MD-LOT), on behalf of Scottish Ministers, are the responsible authority for this activity between 3-12 nautical miles. This creates an inconsistent approach to the regulation of this activity between 0-12 nautical miles and may lead to duplicated effort, and a need to increase resourcing appropriate expertise within MD-LOT to fulfil this function.

Scottish Ministers recently introduced the Town and Country Planning (Marine Fish Farming) (Scotland) Amendment Order 2025 to ensure consistency in approach to aquaculture planning regulations across the 0-12 nautical mile zone, by identifying relevant local planning authorities as the responsible body for assessing and determining fish and shellfish farm planning applications out to 12 nautical miles.

By extension, the proposals set out in this consultation are being brought forward to ensure fish farm developments between 3-12 nautical miles are appropriately assessed, licenced and regulated in respect to environmental discharges, in a consistent manner with how that activity is regulated between 0-3 nautical miles in place of a division in regulatory responsibilities between SEPA and Scottish Government as would currently be the case for environmental discharges. These environmental discharges include organic waste, medicinal residues and sea lice.

In addition, amendments to existing marine licence ‘exempted activities’ provisions, in respect to the deposit of substances and equipment from fish and shellfish farms, are proposed for the purposes of reducing regulatory duplication.