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Under item 2, we will hear from the Crown Estate in Scotland. Following the Crown Estate’s response to the Scottish Affairs Committee’s report, it will engage with our committee annually on its priorities, work and operations in Scotland.
Good morning, convener. Thank you. First, I tender the apologies of Gareth Baird, the Scottish commissioner for the Crown Estate. He would have liked to be here this morning, but unfortunately—or fortunately—he is on annual leave at present so he cannot be here. He sends his best wishes.
Good morning. I lead for the Crown Estate on aquaculture business and I am also joint technical lead, with our chief scientist, on our emerging marine biomass business. I am happy to update you on the following: the role of the Crown Estate in aquaculture following the transfer of planning controls to local authorities; our continuing support for the industry with regard to sponsorship, research and development; and our participation and collaboration with Marine Scotland and other bodies on aquaculture business in Scotland.
I look after the rural and coastal business in Scotland. We are concentrating on three areas: partnership orientation and work with our tenants on co-investment; enhancing the economic performance of our assets and opportunities and opening up opportunities for Scotland; and engaging with local communities and communications, and improving our role therein.
Thank you. We should go straight to the formalisation of your relationship with us. We are talking about a reserved matter and you are responsible to the United Kingdom Parliament, but you have agreed to come to this committee every year to submit your report for examination by the committee. In light of that, I take it that reports such as the one that you produced in the summer are likely to be done on a continuing timetable. Therefore, would you expect to come to see us in the autumn?
The late autumn would work well for those reports, especially if that fits in with the committee’s business.
If we are to be able to think about the way in which the process works, it is important for us to know about your business plan and your long-term strategy, which we hope to explore just now.
I have to confess that I am not. If you have any questions, we will try to answer them today.
We would like to make sure that the 2013 report contains a good deal more detail about, for example, income and investments. My colleague Graeme Dey has a question about that.
What I pick up from the report is that the Crown Estate generated £11.9 million in income from Scotland last year. Is that right? How much of that was reinvested in Scotland? Do you envisage the percentage that is reinvested increasing or decreasing in the coming years?
On capital investment in different projects, obviously we split revenue and capital, with all our revenue surplus going to the Treasury.
On renewable energy in particular, the commitment that we have made to investment in the Pentland Firth and Orkney waters alone is £5.7 million.
Is that in one year?
No, it is over the course of the programme.
How long does the programme run for?
It runs until it starts delivering. That £5.7 million is being used to fund enabling actions, including work on the following: ornithological cumulative impact assessments; aerial surveys; cumulative impact assessment workshops; workshops on the Rochdale envelope; the joint citation protocol; the marine protected areas network; socioeconomic methodologies; near-shore surveys and deployment of first phases; and strategic energy resource measurements. The money will be used to undertake those works, which will help to de-risk and accelerate the projects in the Pentland Firth and Orkney waters programme.
This might be a simplistic question, but I am looking for a ballpark figure. Of the £11.9 million that has been spent in the past year, how much would you guess has been reinvested in Scotland? Do you think that perhaps it is 20 or 25 per cent, or is it less? What sort of figure are we talking about?
As you should be able to see from the report, the income that was received in respect of renewables in Scotland was in the region of £600,000 to £700,000. It is predicted that the investment for this year will be somewhere in the region of £3.8 million.
Of course, within that—according to your report—is the issue of the valuation of wind farms from round 3. That investment will lead to considerable income.
Round 3 is separate from that. It is worth pointing out that the figures for investment in respect of round 3 are not included in these figures because they are part of the UK programme and are dealt with as such. The money that goes to developers in respect of round 3 and the enabling actions from which the sites benefit is not included.
Why is the investment in Scottish waters separated from the Scotland report? Why is it not organised so that information is available in the report?
Round 3 is simply being viewed as a UK programme. There is a clear line of sight into the overall UK picture. The enabling actions and the workstreams that we are using for round 3, and the investment that we are using for round 3, are not peculiar to the Scottish projects. The entire programme is seen as a whole. That is how it is being delivered, and that is why it is being dealt with in that way.
From an accounting point of view, will that continue to be the case? Will we never be able to know what income is coming from offshore renewables in Scottish waters? Will that always be accounted for separately?
I will be honest and say that I do not know how the income that is derived from the sites will be dealt with or what the position on that is. That is a fair bit away at this point. There is no income at all at this stage. It is all investment at the moment, as you can imagine.
The investment period is short, but there will be a long period of likely income when the sites are up and running.
Quite a large investment is at risk, it has to be said. There is no guarantee that the sites will be viable. The sites still have to go through the consent process, Marine Scotland has to make a decision on them and then the companies have to decide whether to go ahead with the substantial investment that they will need to make to build out the sites. If they do not build them out, there is a possibility that the return on investment will be nil. Obviously, we hope to avoid that, and we are working to minimise the chance of that as much as we can.
Do not get me wrong: I think that most people realise that the management of the sea has to take place. However, we need to consider the conditions in Scottish waters, which one would have thought would be covered by the role of the management board in Scotland, and inform the board in London of our concerns. We want to see what the precise functions of the board in Scotland are, who is on it, when it will meet, whether its activities will be made public, and how it formally links into the overall governance of the Crown Estate.
As you are aware, there is a management board in Scotland. I believe that the terms of reference for the management board and the governance structure are available on the website, but if they are not, I will ensure that they are sent on to the clerk.
Given that we are into issues that already cut across the work of the board in Scotland and the overall UK approach, you can understand why we are trying to probe the matter a bit further.
Good morning. I have a straightforward question that might be quite difficult to answer. Can any of you clarify for the committee what income in the round comes from the Scottish estate and how much investment there is specifically in Scotland?
When you said “in the round”, did you mean the overall gross figure for Scotland?
Yes. Rural, marine—
Do you want a breakdown?
No, I am not asking for a breakdown. You asked me what I meant by “in the round”: I meant everything.
Right. The overall global figure for Scotland is £12.3 million gross revenue per annum, which breaks down into £8.3 million for marine, £3.2 million for rural, and £0.8 million for our urban portfolio, which is pretty small. Those are the gross figures.
On the renewables side, from last year’s results, income was £700,000, and investment was substantially more than that. The projection for this year is that investment will be around £3.8 million, and income will be roughly the same as it was.
I would like to push that a little further. I appreciate that you have already highlighted round 3 funding. It might be difficult to break things down into annual figures, but I am trying to ascertain the income that comes from the Scottish estate per se, so that the committee can be reassured about how much is coming in. You have given many breakdown figures but, if possible, what I am looking for from the Crown Estate is what is being invested in Scotland in total. I hope that it is possible to give us that information—if not today, then at another point, please.
We would be happy to provide an overall breakdown. If you let us know details that you particularly want to see, we will be happy to provide them afterwards.
It would have been reassuring if we could have had those figures today, because the issue is quite important in view of our brief. We are looking at income and investment. Obviously, how things are done and what the money goes into are important, but as a member of the committee—I will not speak for the rest of the committee—I would like to understand the overall figures for Scotland.
I should perhaps put in a bid for aquaculture, which, for us, has been an established business for 30 years in Scotland. Our on-going annual research and development and sponsorship budgets, which equate to between 10 and 15 per cent of revenues, add to the pot and the mix.
You mentioned your strong portfolio of properties. One issue that has been raised relates to the sale of a Scottish asset in order to invest in a supermarket property in England. What view does your committee, of which the Scottish commissioner is in charge, take on your assets in Scotland with regard to transfers of properties and assets for investment elsewhere?
The Scottish management board would look at any major or indeed sensitive transaction sales; after all, the issue is not just the sale itself, but understanding the asset. I think that you are referring to one of our urban property sales. The fact is that we look across the UK at opportunities for investment that fit our criteria and, at the moment, there is quite a lot of activity in the urban property market. We look to take value where it exists.
I want to pursue this issue because I think that it is fairly close to the heart of quite a lot of folk in the room.
Mr Don can rest assured that capital is not being moved around the world, because we are not allowed to operate anywhere other than within the shores of the UK. I am a proud Scot who wants to see the best for Scotland. For example, our £0.5 million mountain biking project at Glenlivet, which has been put in place with funding from the Cairngorms National Park Authority, Moray Council and Europe, has definitely benefited from a wider pool of capital than the Glenlivet estate could generate itself. In that respect, the estate has certainly received net benefits from our wider portfolio approach.
I accept that there will always be a benefit with a bigger pool, in principle. How does the Scottish board—I am sorry, I do not know whether that is your correct title—or the Scottish management of the Crown Estate use that?
Anyone who comes across me knows that I am charged with looking after the portfolio and growing it. I have a growth target, so as an individual I fight for everything that I can get that benefits my portfolio, and my portfolio stops at the border. I have keen targets and I am keen to deliver against them. However, I appreciate that we benefit in those areas. We have a portfolio approach that I think works. I do not want to say anything on behalf of Ronnie Quinn, but the fact that the capital that is invested into renewables is significantly more than the income that comes from it is a perfect case study of that.
I endorse that position. I and my colleagues in Scotland see it as part of our role to draw on that central pool for Scotland. A good marine cultivation example is our marine biomass activity. That is being looked at from the Crown Estate position as a whole, but we are pushing for—I think that our proposal has been successful—the various demonstration projects that we hope to undertake, and investment in that sector, to be undertaken in Scotland.
As you would expect, I have both options with regard to the specific position of Scotland. In the wider position, with regard to round 3, the energy and infrastructure section is the recipient of a much wider fund and that certainly works to the advantage.
Presumably, once that investment has been made, there is considerable income—as the convener said—over a long period, which will more than pay back that investment.
That is certainly the hope, and that was the business case that was put to the board. If we had not made that business case we would not have been given the money. That is where we are and those funds at this point are out there at risk. We are trying to make that work, not just for the Crown Estate, it must be said, but for the coastal communities around the UK, the job opportunities and the investment supply chain. We are trying hard to maximise all the opportunities.
I return to the point that Claudia Beamish pursued earlier. As I understand from what you have said, you cannot tell us exactly what Scotland brings in. We know what Scotland brings in, but there does not seem to be access to figures that say that we bring in a certain amount and get a certain amount back from the Crown Estate. Is it the case that you could not tell us the figures for, say, a five-year period?
We can be very clear with the overall figures on capital investment, with the exception of the round 3 figures, because of their UK-wide nature. We do not allocate all our costs. To be honest, it would be an arbitrary process to start cutting up such things as our human resource, infrastructure and office costs. However, we can be pretty clear on capital investment and disinvestment, which is normally shown in our report. If the committee would like more details on that, we would be happy to provide them.
I would welcome that. Over the period from 2009 until this year, the Crown Estate and its Scottish operations have been the subject of criticism by a number of reports. From your perspective, which if any of those criticisms would you accept as justified? What are you doing to address those criticisms?
One of the main criticisms that always comes up is about communication, although we are not the only organisation for which that is a challenge.
I want to follow up a point that you touched on. In the autumn 2012 issue of the Crown Estate’s “Scotland Bulletin”, under a heading about the re-letting programme, Alan Laidlaw says:
The most recent agreements have been for 10 years, but I can point to a number of examples of other agreements that we have entered into. Under the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act 2003, we were one of the first large-scale landowners—if not the first—to go out to the open market with an LDT and to let that successfully. What we did thereafter comes back to Mr Don’s comment about how we represent Scotland.
When was the 25-year agreement made?
There have been a number over the past three or four years.
It is not mentioned in the autumn 2012 bulletin.
No. The agreements were made a couple of years ago. I think that the autumn bulletin talked about the recent re-lettings on the open market at Glenlivet, Fochabers and down in Applegirth and Lockerbie.
It was useful to hear your views on that, given that it is something that we are dealing with in another place. Does Claudia Beamish have a question on the agricultural part?
I want to continue with the issue of local engagement in managing agent contracts, but I can leave that until later if you want.
Can you hold on a second? Dick Lyle has a final question on the present issue.
Thank you, convener. I want to return to Mr Laidlaw’s earlier comments on engagement with local communities and individuals. The Crown Estate has massive holdings in Scotland. It is a public body, but as you quite rightly said, some public bodies just do not listen to local people. Can you expand on what listening you do? What steps are you taking to engage with local communities and individuals to ensure that you are listening?
The geography makes it a challenge. I suppose we have two avenues: the managing agents to act on our behalf, and the internal team. We try to gel that as closely as we can so that we know what is going on in each area. Communities are often better served by somebody who is far closer, rather than by having to come all the way to us for an opportunity to speak or to answer.
That is the point I was coming to. You have told us what you want to do and how you will try to do it, but we hear that often from a number of companies and organisations. Are you now a listening organisation? In particular, do you listen to politicians, councillors, community councils and all the other forums with which I am sure you interact the length and breadth of the country?
Yes, absolutely. I will give you examples of the meetings that Ronnie Quinn and I have in the diary. We were up meeting Highland Council a couple of weeks ago and we will see the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities tomorrow. We have dates in the diary for meetings with Argyll and Bute Council early into the new year and we have met Community Land Scotland and others.
I seek further clarification on local engagement, accountability and transparency. I understand that you have launched the retendering and restructuring process for your managing agent contracts in Scotland. The Crown Estate has said:
I am happy to provide that. We are working on the process of tendering the MAs. We are leading on that in Scotland. I am absolutely certain that we need to specify that properly because, as with anything, the best service provision comes from the best instructions. Over the past few months, since that comment was written, we have engaged with many of our stakeholder groups to ask for suggestions on how the process can be done better. In terms of—
Can I just stop you there? How can we find out how work on specific aspects that are a concern to the committee is progressing? Are reports produced on how the interface between your agents and communities is developing? We do not want to have to wait until next year to find out how it is developing.
At present, we are developing the model to go out to tender. If you want an update before next year, once the scope of services is available, we would be happy to share that with the clerk. I suppose that that is the next logical step.
I am sorry that I interrupted you.
It is fine.
That is not what I was asking for, and I do not think that it would be productive. That is certainly not what I was implying.
We encourage the coastal officers to improve accessibility. As Alan Laidlaw said, not every conversation is monitored or reported, but we are keen to ensure that our officers, when going about their business, encourage people who have concerns or who wish to contact us, or who have simple queries about developments, to get in touch with us directly. We prefer to talk to people directly on the phone and, obviously, we cannot report on that. We use a lot of cross-sectoral communication, through the coastal officers and through representatives of particular interests, such as the West Highlands Anchorages and Moorings Association. As Alan Laidlaw said, we cannot get out and talk to everyone, but we are keen to ensure that people can talk to us if they want to and feel comfortable about doing that.
If there was a question about a particular mooring, would we come to you directly to ask about that? You employ the moorings officers.
That is correct. Nine times out of 10, our moorings officers will know the individuals in an area. If there is an escalation, by all means contact us by email initially or by phone and have a chat. Many communities know that process well and engage with our coastal team.
It is in your interests to have an income from moorings. In the past year, have you extended the area of moorings from which you get an income?
There might be more moorings, because people have looked to put moorings in the water as a result of the increase in recreational use, but I am not sure that we have extended the area.
We are encouraging people who have or want to have moorings to form moorings associations, which achieves two things. First, it allows localised management of the moorings, which is usually more conducive to getting everyone into the organisation. Secondly, the costs per mooring halve. I am not sure what our latest moorings charges are, but I think that it is about £70 per annum for a mooring, whereas someone who is a member of a moorings association would pay £30 per annum. We are moving towards having more local control through moorings associations.
On the point about local management agreements, I note that you have announced two pilots: one in Portree on Skye and the other in Lochmaddy on North Uist. You say that the bodies will have more powers over the management of the foreshore and the seabed. Can you give some more detail on how those models will work and on the progress that has been made in establishing them?
Our LMA process is a pilot. The main reason for that is that we cannot come up with all the structures that would be necessary for each individual set of circumstances.
Is there any timescale for when we would expect to see them up and running?
I hope that it will be as soon as possible, bearing in mind that a lot of the groups involved are community groups and that area is not necessarily their core focus.
I will continue on that theme. On the financial set-up of those organisations, would they be self-sustaining?
That is our aspiration for the LMAs. We want communities not only to look after their areas but to finance themselves if at all possible. A lot of the proposals that we have looked at in the past few years that have helped us to develop the LMA concept have involved people seeking to build interest in the area before they go off for other sources of funding.
So the community would keep any income and it would be reinvested there.
Yes. If communities are doing projects themselves that are of a community nature those will seek to be self-sustaining. If we are investing direct capital, we might seek a return, but that would involve moving to more of a commercial lease situation, while LMAs tend to be on a slightly smaller scale.
Are you saying that there would be a commercial lease?
It depends on whether communities are looking for larger areas or looking for us to invest capital. Quite a lot of the schemes will involve a menu approach, so they would start off small but perhaps look to grow in the future.
So where you are investing, you expect a return on your money.
If we put in direct commercial investment, yes. I do not know whether the committee has a copy of our marine stewardship programme review from last year, but that shows many of the projects that we grant fund. We put money into those smaller-scale projects with no expectation of a return because we believe that they are aligned with good management, the improvement of facilities and so on. For example, we have put £15,000 to £20,000 into pontoons and piers from Shieldaig to Shetland and from Vatersay to Applecross. Those are straight grants, and funding is given to the projects with no expectation of a commercial return.
To what extent do communities have decision-making powers under the agreements? Can the agreements be made available to the committee so that we can understand what sort of agreements are being made following discussion with communities? Are there any plans to have larger agreements, possibly involving harbours and other such places?
We are busy launching a pack that will support our document “Local Management Agreements”, which you might well have seen, and it includes draft documentation. It is in draft because of the pilot nature of the projects, but it is available and you could look at it. Because of the individuality of each project, agreements will always be tailored to their individual needs. At present, the easiest thing would be to give you the draft documentation that is available. If you want further detail on completed projects, we could probably provide that. Some of the information might be sensitive to individual communities, but most of it should be out there.
What I am really interested in is how much decision making and power will be in the hands of the communities.
That is down to each individual agreement. Some of the projects have a tight mandate and are specifically about a small area, but some cover larger areas. We have to agree what is appropriate. It is quite difficult to say, before we get into a discussion, where the boundaries will be. The more tightly the area is drawn and the clearer the use is, the less opportunity there will be for competing uses to come into the area and the more control there will be.
I do not want to put words into your mouth, but will the Crown Estate be looking for community empowerment through the agreements?
All the agreements are designed to let communities have more of an interest. Community empowerment is a wide phrase, and to enable communities to have a management interest in things that interest them locally would align with community empowerment. That is why we have looked to go down this route.
I do not want to quibble, but an interest is different from community empowerment. I am trying to understand where the Crown Estate is coming from in becoming more of a listening organisation and, beyond that, the extent to which you are looking to empower the communities that you are involved with.
Empowered communities create opportunities. We all know that. We can all point to examples where that level of engagement and empowerment makes great opportunities. That will always be in the interests of the owner of a property or area, be it Glenlivet or any other, and that is why we look to encourage it. Successful, vibrant communities create more opportunities, and that will benefit the Crown Estate because there will be fewer costs, potentially, and more return if direct investment is available.
Do you have any plans that you can share with us about the possibility of agreements for larger harbours?
We are not in any discussions at the moment. Larger harbours tend to have more than one interest. We are happy to discuss any of those areas that you think are appropriate.
The part of the autumn bulletin that deals with community management and the coastline refers to the debates that took place in the Scotland Bill Committee and the Scottish Affairs Committee. It states that, following the publication of the Scottish Affairs Committee’s inquiry report, there is a
We acknowledge that communities have a growing interest in those areas. Within the confines of what we are able to do at the moment, we believe that LMAs and other agreements with communities are helping to move that issue forward.
But it is not progress on a grand scale. You admitted that just now. Do your critics not understand your position or do you not understand why there are so many critics of how coasts are managed?
The pilots are progressing and we would like more agreements to be proposed. Progress will come from there. We cannot dictate that certain things should happen at certain times.
Just to firm up, then, how many LMAs are in the pipeline?
We have two pilots at the moment, and we are in discussion with a handful of others. If you believe that there are other areas out there that could benefit from LMA status, we would be happy to have the discussion. We reiterated that to the leader of Highland Council the other day, we will say it to COSLA tomorrow, and we will say it to the other authorities in the coming months. There is a genuine appetite for engagement, but engagement has to come from the grass roots to start with otherwise we would be imposing it, which would be even more badly received.
So LMAs are at a very early stage. Nigel Don wants to ask a question about Orkney.
I want to get nearer to the rough water, which I can visualise because I have been there and am aware of the European Marine Energy Centre.
For some time, we have been looking to engage with a number of different councils; we have been discussing memorandums of understanding for the past three or four years. We believe that such memorandums are necessary because, on the one hand, there are different but very clearly aligned areas of interest where business can be done very simply and, on the other, there are other areas of interest that we might not understand or where the local authorities are not as aligned. The memorandums provide an opportunity for us to sit down and agree areas of work in which there might be mutual interest or benefit. Although recently we have not made a lot of progress in that respect, I note that when we met Highland Council we found that, like us, it was very keen to make progress on the MOU, which at one time was being discussed with six local authorities from Argyll and Bute right round to Highland, the Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland. We believe that it improves understanding on both sides to mutual benefit and ultimately to the benefit of communities and the local economy.
On the structure behind all of this, am I right in thinking that in respect of Orkney the Crown Estate would own all the foreshore and all the water within working distance?
Perhaps Alex Adrian might be able to help out with that question.
It would own the seabed but not the foreshore. I think that I am correct in saying that part of Orkney is subject to udal title but, irrespective of that, the fact is that the Crown Estate only owns about 50 per cent of the foreshore around Scotland.
It is always interesting when people talk about udal law, given that people in this place are on record as saying that it no longer stands in Scotland. Nevertheless, we should ignore that for the moment, because it is not going to help us here.
You have hit the nail on the head, Mr Don. It is all about co-operation, speaking to each other and formalising liaison arrangements. Indeed, that was the nature of the discussions that Alan Laidlaw and I had with Highland Council last week.
Why do you need it?
People seem to think that it would be a good idea to have formal liaison with the Crown Estate and we are more than happy to go down that route.
For example, we have been in touch with Orkney Islands Council with regard to a potential zoning pilot in the area. The council has just published its supplementary guidance on fish farm location and planning, and we have offered to participate in looking at zoning as a means of accommodating aquaculture in Orkney for the best interests of the biosecurity and natural heritage of Orkney and the fish-farming industry.
That is very helpful, but the question that arises is: if you have formalised that to some extent with Orkney, do you not want to do the same with every other council?
One of my core roles is looking at how we can progress that. A lot of the formalisation element brings us back to Richard Lyle’s point about people knowing that they can communicate with us. We think that by taking a light touch to this—after all, this is not “War and Peace”—and simply noting where mutual interest lies, where we should have mutual co-operation and how often we engage at senior and operational level, we can strengthen those relationships.
Before we move on to the rough waters of aquaculture, Claudia Beamish has a brief question.
On local management agreements, I completely respect your view that you do not want to dictate to communities. However, there is surely a balance to be struck. I hope that the Crown Estate is proactive in informing communities about the availability of local management agreements and other opportunities for community engagement. How do you do that? Is there a publicly available list of communities with which you engage formally in that regard?
We drafted the information pack very much with a view to making it digestible for anyone who might have an interest, to sow the seed and start them thinking, “Would this work for me in my area?” We formally launched the pack with the board at the end of September, next door at Our Dynamic Earth, and we are about to send it out to many community groups. Our managing agents are using the pack as they engage with the established communities that they know—it is highly likely that agents have a relationship with communities already, and the pack might help communities to formalise things or take them to the next level.
I am not terribly reassured by your answer, because I think that the Crown Estate should know where the communities are. It can be difficult to define “community”, because there are different stakeholders, but there are fragile rural communities, not just in the Highlands but throughout Scotland, about which the committee is concerned, and I hoped that now that your pilots are running you would be able to furnish the committee with a list of the communities with which you expect to engage proactively to inform them about local management agreements. That would be helpful.
What I am saying is that our managing agents are doing that—
My point is that we do not know about that, and I would appreciate it if you could inform the committee about the work. Thank you.
We will move on to aquaculture and fisheries.
The witnesses will be aware of the call for evidence on the Aquaculture and Fisheries (Scotland) Bill, which is still open. Has the Crown Estate made a submission to the consultation? What are your views on the bill?
We responded to the original proposals for the bill and we will respond to the committee’s call for evidence—I cannot say that we are there yet, but work is in progress and you will receive our submission.
In general, you are fairly comfortable. Clearly, the Crown Estate has some input into research in aquaculture and fisheries related to its specific interests. How do you contribute to research in those fields? Also, in your preamble, you mentioned the marine biomass sector. I was hoping that you could expand on that and, in particular, on the demonstration projects that you mentioned and the progress that there has been to date.
We spread funding with a view to accommodating as much research and development as we can, so we contribute a minimum core amount—about £30,000 a year—to the Scottish aquaculture research forum. The bulk of the funding goes into projects in which the aim is to have a short turnaround time that will deliver something of practical value that can be used relatively quickly.
The development is exciting and I am sure that the committee will watch any progress closely. When is the report on the environmental impacts expected? When it is completed, will you share it with the committee?
We are happy to share the report. It should be available now on our website, as is the report on carbon budgeting in relation to various products from seaweed. I am happy to pass on those reports to the committee, which are in the public domain on our website.
The Crown Estate has a responsibility to protect the marine environment more widely and to restore and enhance it—or possibly not enhance it; that is for you to say. In what ways is the Crown Estate reinvesting income to protect the marine environment?
That is part of our wider stewardship fund and our R and D fund, which Alan Laidlaw mentioned. A lot of that involves addressing the sustainability of the developments in which we get involved and does not necessarily relate to particular conservation projects, although I know that colleagues around the UK have had an interest in such projects. The wider thrust—certainly from the aquaculture point of view—concerns looking at how we can make economic developments more sustainable, which means protecting biodiversity and the long-term interests of natural heritage.
We have undertaken the largest aerial bird survey in the world, round the UK’s coast. Cetacean protocols and various such projects under round 3 and under the wave and tidal enabling actions are all aimed at working with the environment.
Another small example is the fishing for litter Scotland project, which we have funded with £30,000 a year for three years. That project involves working with other bodies to identify litter and get it out of the system.
What has emerged from the seabird survey to which Ronnie Quinn referred that would inform how we proceed with offshore renewables? Does it tell us that we might have to restrict locations, for example?
The survey provides a background. It informs developers and helps them to pinpoint where to carry out the detailed analysis that is required for them to proceed to obtain consent.
You have an interest in carbon capture and storage, on which Angus MacDonald will kick off.
I declare an interest, given my early involvement in the Summit Power application for a 500MW electricity plant and CCS project in Grangemouth.
To be honest, you have probably just outlined it very well yourself.
We all hope that there are no further delays because of the UK Government and look forward to progress.
As there are no more questions on carbon capture, we will return to dry land, in case anyone is becoming queasy.
I will give you a brief update to let you know where we have got to. Last week we met Historic Scotland, which was representing the Scottish Government, and Stirling Council and had a wide-ranging discussion. The transfers that you refer to, which took place in 1998 and 1999, involved areas that had never been under the management of the Crown Estate and were not subject to any management prescription or value therefrom. They were, therefore, able to be transferred at nil consideration. With regard to West Princes Street Gardens, which the Scottish Affairs Committee also identified as being of interest, we are making considerable progress with the City of Edinburgh Council, which has been the leaseholder of that area since around 1870.
Is commercialism the first principle of your organisation, given that the present income from Stirling seems to be paramount? Is it not possible to accept that a mistake has been made and that the King’s Park should be treated much like Holyrood Park?
We are trying to find a workable solution. The information has only just become available, and that is why we are sitting down with all the different bodies involved.
Will we get further information from you as that debate develops?
Absolutely. The situation is pretty fast developing. The council aspires to make progress before the December council meeting. I will liaise with the committee clerk to ensure that the committee is kept abreast of progress in whichever way it wishes to be kept updated.
We would very much like to be kept updated. Indeed, after reviewing today’s session, we may well want to follow it up with written questions, including on that issue.
Mr Adrian, you have already highlighted carbon accounting. Can you or your colleagues give more detail on how the Crown Estate more generally as a public body is dealing with its responsibilities under the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009? Is it possible for the committee to see the carbon accounting figures for the different sectors that you work in?
I will have to check with colleagues on just what figures are available, but I know that, for example, our chief scientist is engaged in carrying out what is in effect a sustainability review of all our business sectors. I think that there are about 36 metrics—carbon accounting being one of those—against which all our business sectors have been assessed. I can certainly check whether those figures are available and will be happy to supply them to the committee. We have made an assessment across the board that informs our policies on how we deal on a day-to-day basis with the business sectors that we are involved in.
The sustainability agenda is at the heart of the Crown Estate’s business. We often do not control the direct activity on a property or farm or area of seabed, but we can join the wider debate—as Alex Adrian has done, quite significantly—and influence industry by providing best practice data. It is easier where we have direct managed properties, or where we are making developments. For example, I know that our urban team has been doing work on the proportion of recycled aggregates within our new buildings, ensuring that those really are BREEAM excellent—under the Building Research Establishment environmental assessment method—and ensuring that they have high levels of energy efficiency. We can report to you on a number of different strands there, as well as on our carbon figures.
Will the new tenancy agreements, agreements with communities and agreements with the aquaculture industry all involve an expectation that there will be carbon accounting? Will they all involve reporting in an ordered way on sustainability issues?
I will give an example. Let us consider an agricultural tenancy. If we put a requirement on a tenant to do that sort of activity or enhanced environmental activity, that would put us in a very difficult position in respect of EU funding for that business, as the activity would be done as a requirement of the landlord’s lease rather than for the wider business. It is quite difficult to prescribe what people should do; encouragement is much simpler. We must be careful not to be anti-competitive and impose additional expectations on people’s businesses. That said, we absolutely want to ensure that all the businesses that operate across the estate and which we work with are at the forefront of sustainability. That is why the project work that Alex Adrian talks about is on-going.
To come at the matter from a different direction, I have recently been involved in a couple of conversations in which wave energy device developers have shown interest in working with aquaculture. As aquaculture developments get larger and move into more exposed locations, there is definite potential for harnessing some of the natural energy that is out there. We would take a role in trying to make it as easy and simple as possible for the two sectors to start to work together and combine the benefits that they can gain from co-location and using natural energy.
In general, there is an increasing focus on sustainability and sustainability being taken into general business decisions. The questions whether the business is sustainable and whether there is anything that can be done to it to make it more sustainable are being incorporated into the day-to-day business decision-making process. Eventually, the time will come when certain decisions will be taken because the business is not sustainable.
It is helpful to hear anecdotal evidence, but what I am really asking is whether, as a public body, you have a carbon assessment tool that relates to the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009. If there is one for the estate in Scotland, could we see it, please? If there is not—well, I would expect there to be one for the public body.
We might expect to see the answer to that in writing. It is obvious that a response is not possible at the moment.
As you know, Mr Baird is the Scottish commissioner. I reiterate his apologies that he cannot be at the meeting.
What is the interministerial group?
It is a group that the Government has set up, which is to be chaired by a Treasury minister, with membership from the Crown Estate, the Scotland Office and the Scottish Government, and with appropriate representation from local authorities—for example, through COSLA or a nominee local authority. It is therefore an overarching group, and there is a lower-level working group that reports to it.
Who is involved in the lower-level group?
Again, it will involve the Treasury, the Crown Estate, the Scotland Office, the Scottish Government and COSLA. It will meet more frequently and consider reports on the formal and informal liaison arrangements involving the Crown Estate. I hope that that group will pick up on some of the points that have been expressed around the table this morning. The group will report up to the interministerial group. As I said, it is hoped that that will provide more clarity.
Will we be able to see the reports from the Scottish committee to the central body in London?
That will be a matter for the Treasury. We will not chair the group, which will be set up by the Treasury. It will report up to the interministerial strategic group, of which a Scottish Government minister will be a member.
Okay. Thank you for that. We are at an early stage and we might want to ask many more questions. However, we hope that the commissioner can be here the next time. My questions at the beginning were about when that should take place, and I hope that he can get that in his diary.
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