Scotland Rural Development Programme 2014-2020 - Consultation on Stage 1 Proposals : An Analysis of Responses

2 Response to the Consultation

2.1 This chapter provides details of the number and types of respondents to the consultation and the types of responses received.

Number of responses received and types of respondents

2.2 The consultation received 151 submissions in total. See Table 2.1 for a breakdown of the number of individual and organisational respondents.

Table 2.1: Number of respondents

2.3 Organisational / group respondents included local authorities and other local / regional public organisations; representative bodies for farmers and crofters; environmental, nature and heritage conservation organisations; community groups; economic development agencies; etc. See Table 2.2. A full list of organisational / group respondents is provided at Annex 1. The table shows that, together, farming, crofting and forestry organisations comprised less than a fifth of organisational respondents.

Table 2.2: Type of organisational respondents

2.4 Of the 43 individual respondents, 25 (60%) provided information about their rural interests (e.g. farming, forestry, fishing, etc.). See Table 2.3. About a third of individual respondents were identified as having an interest in farming, crofting or forestry.

Table 2.3: Interests of individual respondents

* Four respondents reported more than one interest. Thus, the total does not equal the total number of individuals who took part in the consultation.

Types of responses received

2.5 Of the total 151 responses, 118 (78%) were submitted using the standard questionnaire format. The remaining 33 (22%) were non-standard responses (email messages or letters which did not entirely address the consultation questions). More than half of individual respondents (56%) submitted non-standard responses, whereas most organisational / group respondents (92%) submitted standard responses. However, respondents who submitted standard responses did not necessarily address all the questions in the consultation questionnaire, or answer both parts of all two-part questions. Response rates varied from 87% (Question 3) to 38% (Question 29). Annex 2 provides details of the response rates for each of the consultation questions.

2.6 It is not unusual for public consultations to receive 'campaign responses'. The term 'campaign response' generally refers to identical responses submitted by different people using a standard form of words provided by a campaign organiser. Some consultations receive substantial numbers of campaign responses.

2.7 The current consultation did not receive any campaign responses in the narrow sense defined above. However, 22 respondents (16 individuals and 6 organisations) submitted responses which all contained two key messages relevant to Question 3 and Question 28 of the consultation:

• "At least 50% of the SRDP 2014-2020 should be allocated to agri-environment." (Question 3)
• "The Scottish Rural Development Programme should modulate the maximum funds allowed (15%) to rural development." (Question 28)

2.8 Several of these responses also referred to a report published by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) called State of Nature 2013.^[4] The responses were all distinctly worded and the key messages were sometimes expressed slightly differently. Nevertheless, taken together, they are a kind of modified campaign.