Single Solway Campaign – Marine Bills must merge
- Read press coverage of the Partnership's Single Solway Campaign
- For a concise and straightforward comparison of the main points of the UK and Scottish Marine Bills - The SPICe document "A Comparison of the UK and the Scottish Marine Bills" is available to download here.
Single Solway Plan – two steps forward and one back?
The Partnership’s Single Solway Plan Campaign has resulted in a joint statement by the UK and Scottish Government on the way forward. Following the Partnership’s meeting in Westminster with Huw Irranca Davis, Hillary Benn and Richard Lochhead agreed a protocol for the joint consultation, preparation and publication of the plans for the north and south Solway to ensure that they are fully integrated. The lawyers have insisted that there must be two plans but the Minister was adamant that they must “be fully integrated and seamless with a single stakeholder consultation”.
The Partnership has welcomed this as a pragmatic solution to the problem. It does mean however that both administrations need to accept that the Solway will be a separate marine plan area. The Scottish Government will be consulting on this later in the year, and the Defra consultation for the English Marine Plan closed on the 16th February 2010.
The DEFRA consultation can be found at Consultation on marine plan areas within the English Inshore and English Offshore Marine Regions.
The Solway has been included in the North West region which stretches down to the Welsh Border. Unless special arrangements are made for the South Solway to be part of the agreed cross border planning process set out by the Ministers then all our good work could be undone.
Out thanks go to everyone who contributed and particularly to the MPs on both sides of the Border and to Russell Brown for arranging the meeting with the Minister.