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4. KEY STEPS TOWARDS DEVELOPING AN INTEGRATED FRAMEWORK
We have already taken a number of steps to facilitate and formalise the delivery of our vision of a collaborative and integrated approach to the protection of the water environment in Scotland. An outline of these steps is presented below:
- Designating the Water Environment (Controlled Activities) (Scotland) Regulations ( CAR) as a Relevant Enactment 2
The WEWS Act imposes an explicit duty on the Scottish Ministers and SEPA to exercise their functions under the Act in a manner which secures compliance with the requirements of the Directive. As well as introducing River Basin Management Planning, the WEWS Act allows Scottish Ministers to introduce a range of secondary legislation to ensure that Scotland's water environment is protected appropriately. As a result, CAR was introduced in 2005 to regulate activities which have the potential to impact on the water environment in Scotland, such as discharges, abstractions, impoundments and engineering works in the freshwater environment. We have now extended this explicit duty to the functions of Ministers and SEPA under CAR.
- Designating WEWS Responsible Authorities
This process identified those public bodies (for example, local authorities and Scottish Water) whose day-to-day activities have a particularly high degree of relevance to the water environment in Scotland, and placed them under an explicit obligation to secure compliance with the aims and principles of the Directive when exercising certain statutory functions. In doing so, the responsible authorities are also required to take account of the social and economic impact of the exercise of those functions; and to work collaboratively with each other, Ministers and SEPA.
- Legislative amendment programme
Certain pre-existing regimes have such relevance to the water environment that more direct action was required to ensure a transparent, integrated and effective approach. Accordingly, we have clarified how these other regimes should operate in respect of their potential impacts on the water environment; for example, by making amendments to existing legislation where necessary to align key regimes (such as the consenting process for new electricity generation developments under the Electricity Act 1989) with the aims of the Directive, the WEWS Act and CAR.
It will be essential to ensure that WFD aims and objectives are embedded into any new legislation that has a potential impact on the water environment, such as land use planning or flood management.
Alongside these statutory mechanisms, the Scottish Government is continuing to work closely with our partners and stakeholders to integrate and align other policy mechanisms such as guidelines and administrative arrangements, to support efficient delivery of not only WEWS and CAR but also future RBMPs and their implementation.
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