Scotland’s Future Catching Policy: selectivity proposals 2026

Feedback from the first FCP consultation and discussions with internal and external stakeholders has confirmed that existing legislation relating to technical conservation measures is diffuse, complicated, and can be difficult to find and understand.

For example, there are hundreds of lines of legislation relating to technical fishing measures alone. As part of the development process for the FCP, we identified and collated all existing measures and considered whether they could be improved, removed or replaced with something better.

Following this process of collation and review, we are of the view that the FCP should not only look to deliver selectivity improvements where we can, but should act as the vehicle to consolidate the myriad technical measures within existing regulations into a more simplified, streamlined framework which will contain all of the technical regulations that fishers in Scotland need to abide by, with any selectivity improvements or best practise measures incorporated.

Technical conservation measures are complicated and can be difficult for fishers to find and understand for compliance purposes due to various requirements set out over a number of different legislative documents.

Taking forward consolidation of selectivity measures would aid transparency and streamlining of regulation. It would also give us the foundation, with flexibility, from which we can proactively pursue innovative selectivity improvements in Scottish waters. Streamlining the framework may also allow the opportunity to amend current statutory provisions which no longer have an application in Scottish waters.

Consolidation of legislation and creation of a new framework can be complex and resource intensive and therefore is unlikely to be something that could be undertaken quickly. Subject to the outputs from this consultation, further work on scoping and timescales will be undertaken.