Management & law

Marine decisions in Shetland are made through a web of licensing, planning and regulatory systems.

But a prior question is normally skipped: what lawful title is being relied on to allocate the sea and seabed?

If ownership is assumed, then consents become administrative practice rather than demonstrated capacity. This page asks: who is said to own Shetland’s sea and seabed — and where is that title evidenced?

What is being decided?

A salmon farm consent is not a small decision. It effectively grants long-term industrial use of a portion of shared waters.

In practice, this can mean:

  • exclusion of fishing activity (formal or informal)
  • altered navigation and safety conditions
  • ongoing environmental and disease risk
  • industrial precedent for further expansion

Who decides?

In Shetland, aquaculture expansion can involve:

  • Shetland Islands Council (planning and local decisions)
  • Scottish Government agencies and licensing bodies
  • environmental regulators
  • marine and seabed authorities

This can create a situation where no single body feels fully responsible for the overall outcome.

Brexit: the promise of control, and the lived outcome

Many fishermen supported Brexit on a clear promise: the UK would “take back control” of its waters.

In practice, post‑Brexit arrangements maintained substantial reciprocal access — and in 2025 the access framework was extended out to 2038. Many fishermen therefore feel that the promise was traded away in wider negotiations.

The question is not party politics. It is accountability:

  • Who made the trade‑offs, and on what mandate?
  • What was gained in return — and for whom?
  • Why were fishing communities expected to carry the cost?

A further concern now being expressed is that the current government is moving steadily closer to the EU. If so, the question becomes: are we drifting back towards the same policy constraints the public voted to leave? If that is not the intention, clarity is needed.

Law is only as strong as its enforcement

The existence of regulations is not the same as effective control.

A credible system requires:

  • independent monitoring
  • transparent reporting
  • clear thresholds for action
  • enforcement that is not discretionary

If enforcement is weak, the system becomes permission by default.

The “missing party” problem

The inshore marine environment is a shared resource. Yet, decisions are often made as if:

  • the water is a blank asset to allocate
  • existing users are secondary
  • displacement has no compensable value

This creates a structural unfairness: fishermen carry loss, while corporate operators receive secure access.

Sequence matters

Shetland First’s approach is not to demand a particular outcome. It is to ask whether the sequence is defensible.

A defensible sequence would be:

  • identify the affected grounds
  • identify the affected stakeholders
  • quantify impact
  • test alternatives
  • establish compensation or refusal thresholds
  • only then consent

If consent comes first and mitigation is an afterthought, the system is backwards.

Why this overlaps with the wider TSNS framework

This site does not claim authority. It does not attempt to replace existing institutions.

It does, however, point to a foundational issue:

Many decisions affecting Shetland land and sea proceed on institutional presumption. The deeper question — what lawful title and capacity those decisions ultimately rest on — is rarely examined.

Whether or not a person agrees with that wider framing, it remains true that marine space decisions have real local consequences.

Evidence

Supporting documents are stored in the TSNS Evidence Library. You can search by tags such as Sea, Law, FOI, and Cases.

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