News / Crown Estate should hand over marine assets
CROWN Estate control of the seabed and coastline of Scotland has been dealt a major blow by a powerful government committee.
Westminster’s Scottish affairs committee (SAC) has advised the income from the marine estate and foreshore should go “as much as possible” to local authorities and communities.
In the last five years Scotland has lost more than £10 million from the way the Crown Estate Commission (CEC) runs its operations, which include closing its Scottish office 10 years ago.
The SAC report follows a lengthy consultation on the future of the CEC, which has come under heavy criticism for decades for the way it manages its marine assets.
There is particular concern with the forecast growth in marine renewables, which are estimated to eventually bring an annual return to the CEC of between £12 and £49 million.
Welcoming the report, northern isles MP Alistair Carmichael highlighted the committee’s conclusion that devolving control to an SNP-controlled Holyrood would simply transfer existing problems from London to Edinburgh.
“Given the enthusiasm with which the SNP are centralising critical services, I see little prospect of communities in the highlands and islands having any say in how this money is spent if it were devolved without safeguards,” he said.
The SAC identified some major concerns regarding the Crown Estate’s management of its responsibilities, including:
* a lack of accountability and transparency;
* lack of communication and consultation with local communities;
* cash leaking from local economies and other adverse impact;
* limited benefits in Scotland;
* its statutory remit being inappropriate.
Interestingly, similar problems were not identified with the way the Crown Estate Commission (CEC) managed its urban and rural estates.
The committee concluded the best way forward was to simply “end the CEC’s responsibilities for the administration and revenues of the ancient Crown property, rights and interests in Scotland”.
The report added: “However, simply handing these responsibilities to Holyrood would not address the fundamental problems identified: the Committee says devolution of these powers should be based on the CEC’s further decentralisation to local authority and local community levels to the maximum extent possible.
“Devolution to Holyrood should be conditional upon an agreement between the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Scottish Government as to how this will be implemented.”
Committee chairman Ian Davidson said they had not expected such strength of feeling on the Crown Estate when they opened their inquiry into the Scotland Bill.
“We received a high volume of strongly critical evidence about the CEC, which led us to launch this full separate inquiry into its work,” he said.
“We visited various communities in Orkney, Shetland, Caithness, Argyll and the Western Isles and took evidence from every interested party we could find.
“Considering the nature and extent of the problems identified to us, almost exclusively in relation to the marine and coastal assets in Scotland, we have had to conclude that the CEC should no longer be the body responsible in these areas.
“The point is to conserve these assets and maximise the benefits to the island and coastal communities most closely involved with them. We are convinced the only way this can be done is by devolving as much of the responsibility – and benefit – down to the level of those local communities as possible.”
The CEC’s Scottish commissioner Gareth Baird said their commitment to Scotland and its economy remained “full and whole-hearted”.
He said: “We’ll be studying the report’s recommendations closely, looking at how we can build on the work of our world-class renewable energy team in supporting the offshore ambitions of the Scottish government and local communities.”
Last year the CEC set up the Coastal Communities Fund to try and address concerns about its distribution of income.
The full report can be found here.
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