Building trust through transparency: how SEPA delivers consistent, accessible engagement
The challenge
As the nation's environmental regulator, they needed to consult on an extraordinarily diverse range of issues: highly technical radioactive substances authorisations, complex river basin management plans affecting entire regions, controversial marine fish farm regulations balancing economic and conservation interests, and flood risk management plans directly affecting thousands of households.
Each consultation presents its own unique challenges. Some require deep technical expertise to understand (standard conditions for radioactive substances authorisations, charging schemes for industrial activities). Others impact broad public interest but involved complex scientific frameworks (sea lice management in aquaculture, climate change impacts on flood risk). Many consultations have the potential to be controversial, involving competing interests between industry, conservation groups, and local communities.
The approach
SEPA uses Citizen Space as their consultation platform, recognising that consistency, accessibility, and transparency would be essential to rebuilding trust and managing their complex consultation landscape.
The platform provides the structural consistency SEPA needed. Whether someone is responding to a consultation on radioactive waste management, flood risk planning, or aquaculture charging schemes, they encounter the same look, feel, and navigation. This consistency proved transformative for regular stakeholders (environmental organisations, industry bodies, community councils) who engage with multiple SEPA consultations across different regulatory areas.
SEPA configured Citizen Space to create a comprehensive consultation hub where all consultations, open and closed, are accessible in one place. This transparency is essential in environmental regulation, where stakeholders want to understand not just individual decisions but patterns across SEPA's regulatory work. Communities can see what consultations are active, what's coming up, and crucially, access detailed feedback on closed consultations showing how their input influenced final decisions.
The results
SEPA now runs a sophisticated consultation programme that would be impossible to manage without consistent infrastructure. The platform has handled activity of all sizes. From consultations attracting a dozen responses (marine fish farm charging changes, 12 responses) to thousands (HMNB Clyde radioactive substances application, over 7,000 responses).
The Flood Risk Management Plans consultation demonstrated the platform's capability to support major strategic engagement. Delivered in partnership with local authorities across two phases between December 2020 and October 2021, the consultation attracted 677 responses (654 online, 23 by email, 77% from members of the public). The feedback resulted in 13 specific categories of changes to the final plans, from adding new actions to providing better information on climate change assessment and community support.
CItizen Space handles diverse consultation types seamlessly. Technical consultations on charging schemes (28 responses to waste, water and industrial activities proposals) sit alongside broad public consultations on flood preparedness tools and complex multi-jurisdictional work like Solway Tweed river basin management planning (conducted jointly with the Environment Agency).
The cumulative effect of consistent, accessible, transparent consultation has strengthened Scotland's environmental governance. SEPA's consultation programme demonstrates that environmental regulation can be both rigorous and democratic, technically sophisticated and publicly accessible, efficient and genuinely responsive.
By choosing Citizen Space, SEPA found infrastructure that embodies their commitment to transparency and accountability whilst handling the operational complexity of Scotland's environmental regulation. The platform hasn't just improved consultation processes; it has become essential to how SEPA builds and maintains the public trust essential for effective environmental protection.
Delib is a govtech leader specialising in consultation and engagement, trusted by over 600 government organisations worldwide, including major planning projects. Since 2004, we've been building secure, accessible digital platforms to make participation simpler, fairer, and more inclusive. Our flagship product, Citizen Space, was built in collaboration with the UK government and has supported more than 11 million responses across over 110,000 democratic activities.