Salmon fishing: proposed river gradings for the 2026 season - data protection impact assessment
A data protection impact assessment (DPIA) to consider and assess any potential privacy impacts that may be experienced during the consultation on Salmon fishing: proposed river gradings for the 2026 season, and consultation analysis of the responses.
10. Annex A – privacy information
Included in this annex are the letters and emails which went out to stakeholders, showing the various ways that we have alerted them to the consultation and seeking their views.
1.1.1 Mailshot to our stakeholder contacts list letting them know the consultation is live.
Conservation of salmon – Assessment for the 2026 fishing season
I am writing to let you know that the Scottish Ministers propose to continue to regulate the killing of salmon in Scotland, including the prohibition on retaining any salmon caught in coastal waters, by means of conservation regulations made under section 38 of the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 2003.
Marine Directorate has undertaken an assessment of the conservation status of salmon in inland waters in Scotland for the 2026 fishing season. The outcome of that assessment, including proposed gradings for rivers and assessment groups in 2026, is available on the Scottish Government website.
Ministers are required, under the terms of section 38 and schedule 1 of the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 2003, to publish notice of the proposals allowing a minimum 28 day period for representations or objections to be made. Notice is hereby given that the consultation will be advertised and commence on Wednesday 6th August 2025.
If you wish to submit a view on the proposed river gradings, you can do so online through our consultation hub.
You can save and return to your responses while the consultation is still open. Please ensure that consultation responses are submitted before the closing date of Sunday 7th September 2025.
If you are unable to respond using our consultation hub, please contact us for an alternative way to submit your response.
Email to: salmonandrecreationalfisheries@gov.scot
Post to: Wild Salmon and Recreational Fisheries
Marine Directorate of Scottish Government
Victoria Quay
Edinburgh
EH6 6QQ
Data Protection
In accordance with the requirements of section 38 and schedule 1 of the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 2003 Scottish Ministers are required to seek representations on the general effect of proposed salmon conservation regulations. You have been contacted because you have previously expressed an interest in contributing to the process. We currently hold a list of e-mail addresses for this purpose and are contacting you again to give you the opportunity to contribute to this year’s consultation. Your details will be stored and used solely for the purposes of this annual consultation or of related matters concerning salmon and recreational fisheries. If you no longer wish to be included in such consultations, please let us know and we will remove you from our contact list. Further details about the Scottish Government’s privacy policy can be found at: - https://www.gov.scot/privacy/
1.1.2 The consultation paper itself will have a respondent information form (RIF) which uses standard Scottish Government wording as noted below.
Responding to this Consultation
We are inviting responses to this consultation by 7 September 2025.
Please respond to this consultation using the Scottish Government’s consultation hub, Citizen Space (http://consult.gov.scot). Access and respond to this consultation online at https://consult.gov.scot/marine-scotland/salmon-fishing-proposed-river-gradings-2026-season/. You can save and return to your responses while the consultation is still open. Please ensure that consultation responses are submitted before the closing date of 7 September 2025.
If you are unable to respond using our consultation hub, please complete the Respondent Information Form to:
Wild Salmon and Recreational Fisheries
Marine Directorate
Scottish Government
Area 1B North
Victoria Quay
Edinburgh
EH6 6QQ
Handling your response
If you respond using the consultation hub, you will be directed to the About You page before submitting your response. Please indicate how you wish your response to be handled and, in particular, whether you are content for your response to published. If you ask for your response not to be published, we will regard it as confidential, and we will treat it accordingly.
All respondents should be aware that the Scottish Government is subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and would therefore have to consider any request made to it under the Act for information relating to responses made to this consultation exercise.
If you are unable to respond via Citizen Space, please complete and return the Respondent Information Form included in this document.
To find out how we handle your personal data, please see our privacy policy: https://www.gov.scot/privacy/
Next steps in the process
Where respondents have given permission for their response to be made public, and after we have checked that they contain no potentially defamatory material, responses will be made available to the public at http://consult.gov.scot. If you use the consultation hub to respond, you will receive a copy of your response via email.
Following the closing date, all responses will be analysed and considered along with any other available evidence. Responses will be published where we have been given permission to do so. An analysis report will also be made available.
Comments and complaints
If you have any comments about how this consultation exercise has been conducted, please send them to the contact address above or at SalmonandRecreationalFisheries@gov.scot.
Scottish Government consultation process
Consultation is an essential part of the policymaking process. It gives us the opportunity to consider your opinion and expertise on a proposed area of work.
You can find all our consultations online. Each consultation details the issues under consideration, as well as a way for you to give us your views, either online, by email or by post.
Responses will be analysed and used as part of the decision making process, along with a range of other available information and evidence. We will publish a report of this analysis for every consultation. Depending on the nature of the consultation exercise the responses received may:
- indicate the need for policy development or review
- inform the development of a particular policy
- help decisions to be made between alternative policy proposals
- be used to finalise legislation before it is implemented
While details of particular circumstances described in a response to a consultation exercise may usefully inform the policy process, consultation exercises cannot address individual concerns and comments, which should be directed to the relevant public body.
Salmon fishing: proposed river gradings for 2026 season
Respondent Information Form and Consultation Questionnaire
Please Note this form must be completed and returned with your response.
To find out how we handle your personal data, please see our privacy policy: https://www.gov.scot/privacy/
1.1.3 The Privacy notice, which has been included at each stage of the above letters and points of contact with stakeholders. Further details about the Scottish Government’s privacy policy can be found online. Text is below for ease of reference.
Privacy
General information
This privacy notice tells you what to expect us to do with your personal information when you contact us, including by phone, email, and post and when you visit our website or subscribe to our newsletter.
When we process your personal information, we promise to:
- make sure you know why we need it
- only ask for what we need, and not collect too much or irrelevant information
- make sure it is accurate and up to date
- let you know if we share it with other organisations, unless we have a legal obligation to pass it on without telling you
- protect it and make sure nobody has access to it who shouldn't
- make sure we don't keep it longer than is necessary
The first part of the notice is information we need to tell everybody.
Controller’s contact details
The Scottish Government falls under the legal entity of the Scottish ministers in relation to processing of your personal information. We are the controller for the personal information we process, unless otherwise stated.
Our Central Enquiry Unit will pass on your enquiry to the appropriate area.
Telephone
Opening hours: Monday to Friday - 8:30am to 5pm.
From the UK: 0300 244 4000 (0300 numbers are geographically neutral)
International callers: +44 131 244 4000
Text relay service: 18001+ 0300 244 4000 (service for the hard of hearing)
If you are a British Sign Language (BSL) user, you can contact us via our national BSL video relay service Contact Scotland-BSL.
Email ceu@gov.scot
Post
Scottish Government St. Andrew's House Regent Road Edinburgh EH1 3DG
Data Protection Officer's contact details
You can contact our Data Protection Officer at DataProtectionOfficer@gov.scot or via our postal address. Please mark the envelope ‘Data Protection Officer’.
Your data protection rights
Data protection law gives you certain rights that you may exercise in respect of your own personal information.
- you have a right to request a copy of personal information we hold about you, by making a subject access request. This right always applies. There are some exemptions, which means you may not always receive all the information we process. We have published further information on this
- you have the right to ask us to update our records if you believe that the data we hold is inaccurate or incomplete. This right always applies
- you have the right to ask us to erase your personal information. There may however be some circumstances in which we cannot comply. Such as, if we have a legal duty to keep data, or we process it in a particular way
- you have the right to ask that we stop or restrict the processing of your information in certain circumstances
- you have the right to object to processing if we are able to process your information because the process forms part of our public tasks
- you have the right to ask that we transfer the information you gave us from one organisation to another, or give it to you. This right only applies to information you have given us and we are processing information based on your consent or under, or in talks about entering into a contract and the processing is automated
You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. We have one month to respond to you. Please contact us at dpa@gov.scot if you wish to make a request, or contact our Central Enquires Unit on 0300 244 4000.
Your right to complain
If you have concerns about our compliance with data protection laws ,please contact our Data Protection Officer in the first instance at DataProtectionOfficer@gov.scot. They will look into the concerns you have raised and provides the response.
If you are not satisfied with the DPO’s response you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). The ICO are the supervisory authority responsible for data protection in the UK. You can contact the Information Commissioner at:
The Information Commissioner Wycliffe House Water Lane Wilmslow Cheshire SK9 5AF
Tel: 08456 30 60 60
More information is available at make a complaint on the Information Commissioner's site.
How we get information
Most of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by you for one of the following reasons:
- you have a question or a concern about something
- you have made an information request to us
- you subscribe to our newsletter
We also receive personal information indirectly, in the following scenarios:
- we have contacted an organisation about an issue you have raised and it gives us your personal information in its response
Lawful basis for processing
We process your personal information because:
- you have given us clear consent for us to process your personal data for a specific purpose
- processing is necessary for a contract we have with you, or because you have asked us to take specific steps before entering into a contract
- processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation that applies to us
- processing is necessary to protect your (or some else’s) life
- processing is necessary for us to perform a task in the public interest or for our official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law
Changes to this privacy notice
We keep our privacy notice under regular review to make sure it is up to date and accurate. If this privacy notice changes in any way, we will update this page. Regularly reviewing this page ensures that you are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances we share it with other parties.
Contacting the Scottish Government
You may have written to us, or contacted us by phone, because you have a question or concern about something. This part of the privacy notice sets out how we use your personal data, and your rights when communicating with us.
What we do with information we collect from you when you contact us
When you write to us or call us, your enquiry will usually be first handled by our Central Enquiry Unit or Public Engagement Unit. They will then send it to a specific team so that your question can be answered. We will only use your personal information for the purpose of handling, investigating and resolving your issue. We will use the contact details you provided to respond to your correspondence. If you have raised any issues about a third party, we may use the contact details you have provided for them to investigate your issue.
What personal information we collect
We need enough information from you to answer your enquiry. If you call the helpline, we will make an audio recording of. If you contact us via email or post, we’ll need a return address for response.
Who we share your information with
Your enquiry will often need specialist advice, and will be passed to the relevant team for consideration and input.
In some circumstances we will share your information with other organisations. When we do that we’ll satisfy ourselves that we have a lawful basis on which to share the information and document our decision making and satisfy ourselves we have a lawful basis on which to share the information.
Calling our helpline
Our Central Enquiry Unit record all incoming calls as an audio record. The information collected is the date, time, duration, the telephone number if not withheld and the name of the agent who handled the call. That is captured by the software used to record the calls. The calls are recorded to monitor the behaviour of the callers and to provide training for staff. The information is kept for three months.
Visiting our website
We collect information about you when you visit our website, and when you interact with our pages. We also collect information when you provide feedback or subscribe to our newsletter.
What we do with information we collect from you when you visit our website
We use this information to:
- improve the site by monitoring how you use it
- respond to any feedback you send us, if you've asked us to
- send out email alerts to those who have subscribed to our e-newsletter
- record and/or publish your response to a survey or consultation
- publish your comment on a blog or discussion site
What personal information we collect
Analytics
We use a third party service, Google Analytics, to collect information on how you use the site, using cookies and page tagging techniques.
The information we - and Google - collect doesn't identify anyone, and is kept for a maximum of 38 months. If we do want to collect personally identifiable information through the site, we will be upfront about it.
When staff use our site
We use IP addresses to identify Scottish Government staff accessing the site from Scottish Government networks.
We record these users as 'internal' on this site. This helps us produce more accurate data about how members of the public use our content.
All visitors are anonymous. We cannot identify individuals.
Cookies
You can read more about how we use cookies, and how to change your cookies preferences, on our Cookies page.
Additionally, we use Plausible Analytics on this site to collect some anonymous usage data for statistical purposes. This is to track overall trends in our website traffic, not to track individual visitors. All the data is in aggregate only. No personal data is collected to Plausible. Data collected includes referral sources, top pages, visit duration, information from the devices (device type, operating system, country and browser) used during the visit. Read more in the Plausible Analytics data policy.
Subscribing to our e-newsletter
We collect your email address and subscription preferences when you sign up to our e-newsletter. You can also provide your name but this is optional. We track how our emails are used - for example whether you open them and which links you click on. The lawful basis we rely on to process personal data when you subscribe to our newsletter is consent. This means you have the right to withdraw your consent, or to object to the processing of your personal data for this purpose at any time. You can unsubscribe from receiving the newsletter at any time by selecting the 'unsubscribe' link that appears in every email. Once you have unsubscribed, your details will be deleted immediately from the system.
Feedback
If you contact us asking a question or giving feedback, we collect your email address and any other personal data contained in your message. If you contact us asking for information, we may need to contact other government bodies to find that information.
Consultations
We collect names and email addresses with every response we receive through our consultation platform.
Email addresses are used to send an acknowledgement of response following submission. They may also be used to contact you in the future in relation to the consultation exercise if you give consent to be contacted.
Where permission is given, we publish responses. We include personal data where permission has been given to do so. We never publish email or postal addresses.
Sometimes you may be accessing or linking to topic specific pages from our website – in such cases please refer to the privacy notice for that site.
Blogs and discussion sites
We collect names or usernames, and email addresses with each comment. This data is kept as long as the blog post or dialogue remains published.
Who we share your information with
We use Mailchimp to process our email newsletter subscriptions. Mailchimp’s privacy notice outlines how they collect, use, share and process personal information.
Links to other websites
When we link to other websites, we encourage you to read the privacy policy statements contained on those sites.
Data protection policy document
See Information assurance and data protection: data protection policy.