Scottish Government consultations

We sought your views on the proposal for the Scottish Government to seek the Parliament’s approval to extend the duration of Part 2 Order Making Powers in the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 for a further five year period from June 2025 to June 2030.  The consultation opened on 16 December 2024 and closed on 10 February 2025.

You provided us with 21 responses to the questions in our consultation. The responses came in from 15 organisations and six individuals.

With regards to the proposal to seek Parliament's approval to extend the Part 2 Order Making Powers for a further five years, our analysis of the responses found that 16 were in agreement, four opposed and one was neutral with no response given.

We published the responses to the consultation on Citizen Space, where permission has been given to do this.

We also published a consultation analysis report on the Scottish Government website.

As the responses received clearly support the proposal to seek Parliament’s approval to extend the order making powers for a further five year period, we took the necessary action to allow Parliament to consider and scrutinise the request to extend the powers. The Minister for Public Finance gave evidence in relation to this at the Finance and Public Administration Committee on 11 March 2025, where the committee approved the motion to extend these powers. Parliament approved them on 26 March 2025. The Minister for Public Finance signed the SSI (Scottish Statutory Instrument) on 27 March 2025 and this will take effect from June 2025. 

We asked for your views on a set of draft regulations to transfer the Police Appeals Tribunal (PAT) into the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland. The consultation asked ten questions around various proposals regarding the transfer of the PAT. The questions asked were a mix of open and closed questions. The consultation opened on 30 October 2024 and ran until 22 January 2025.

There were seven responses to the consultation. Six (86%) came from organisations and one (14%) came from an individual. There was strong support for some of the proposals such as the procedure for the notice of appeal to be submitted followed by a reply from the respondent and for the routes of onward appeal from the PAT. There was broad support offered for proposals around the potential payment of expenses and the publication of decisions. Respondents to these questions agreed with these proposals but suggested that matters such as the circumstances of each case and data privacy concerns should be important considerations.

There was mixed support for the proposed membership of the PAT. Three responses were in favour of maintaining the current membership arrangements of three legal members while three responses felt there should be members with policing and lay experience.

The response to the open questions gave helpful feedback on some of the technical provisions within the draft regulations or made more general suggestions around clarifying certain procedure rules and the effect of recent primary legislation. There was also support for some of the general practices of the First-tier Tribunal, for example, the role of supporters, being included in the Procedure Rules.

The views given on the proposed draft regulations will be used to inform the process of finalising the set of draft regulations regarding the transfer of the PAT. We will consider carefully all of the points raised when finalising the draft regulations.

We are grateful for the detailed responses to many of the questions and would like to thank everyone who responded. We have published the nonconfidential responses to the consultation (see links below).

View submitted responses where consent has been given to publish the response.

The full government consultation response has been published on the gov.scot website: Police Appeals Tribunal - transfer to First-tier Tribunal for Scotland: consultation analysis and response.

We asked for views on the proposed introduction of fixed penalty notices for offences under; 

•  The Environmental Protection (Single-Use Vapes) (Scotland) Regulations 2024, 

• The Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic Products) (Scotland) Regulations 2021,  

• The Environmental Protection (Cotton Buds) (Scotland) Regulations 2019 and, 

• The Environmental Protection (Microbeads) Regulations 2018. 

We sought your views on the levels at which we propose these penalties should be set, and asked for any comments in relation to other provisions in the Regulations.  

We received 25 responses to this consultation. Of these, 11 responded as individuals and 14 on behalf of an organisation. Responses were primarily provided by Local Authority Trading Standards.  

An overwhelming majority of responses were supportive of the introduction of fixed penalty notices. Key points raised included extending the payment deadlines for fixed penalty notices, the introduction of an appeal mechanism for retailers if they believe an FPN was issued in error without an impact of the discount for early payment, raising the level of penalties set for fixed penalty notices, the importance of alignment with other UK nations, and the introduction of forfeiture and destruction provisions for single-use vapes supplied in contravention of the Vapes Regulations.  

In response to feedback provided, we made the following changes to the Regulations: 

• Amended the wording to remove the reference to online payments, to enable local authorities to utilise the most appropriate payment method in their area, as not all local authorities have an online payment system. 

• Extended the payment deadlines to 14 days for discounted payments and 28 days for full payments for FPNs under the Vapes Regulations. This brings the deadlines in line with those in the Tobacco and Primary Medical Services (Scotland) Act 2010 (TMPS), which Trading Standards officers (who are also responsible for enforcing these Regulations) are experienced at enforcing and under which FPNs are regularly issued. 

• Included provision for a direction-making power in the Vapes Regulations which will enable the Scottish Ministers to direct that single-use vapes supplied in contravention of the regulations are to be treated as waste and disposed of or treated as appropriate. This brings the Scottish Regulations in line with similar provisions in the other UK vapes regulations. 

We agreed with the importance of alignment across the UK nations with regards to enforcement, and therefore opted to keep the proposed level of penalties as are set out in the draft Regulations. 

The full government consultation response has been published on the gov.scot website: Environmental Protection (Single-Use Vapes) (Scotland) Regulations 2024 - fixed penalty notice amendment consultation: response