'Our salmon sector is constrained by legislation built for another era'

Ahead of the May 7 election that will decide who controls the next Scottish Government, former Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) official and aquaculture sector executive Anne Anderson has written a series of five articles exploring why some of the most contested debates around salmon farming remain unresolved despite extensive evidence and policy intent. In her fifth opinion piece she explains how outdated regulation is holding Scottish aquaculture back as fish farmers in other countries advance.

Scotland’s salmon sector appears ready to evolve, yet it remains constrained by legislation built for another era and by legacy behaviours that no longer reflect a modern, collaborative industry.

Much of today’s framework still views aquaculture through a terrestrial lens; it is slow, fragmented, and shaped by processes never designed for marine food production. The Scottish Government’s own diagrams show how licences require multiple sequential approvals across planning authorities, SEPA, Marine Scotland, Crown Estate Scotland, and the Fish Health Inspectorate. It is, in practice, a structure built for near‑shore sites rather than dynamic marine environments.

Extending these rules from three to 12 nautical miles widens the geography but leaves the system unchanged, including biomass limits designed for small, sheltered farms. These constraints now prevent the larger, more efficient sites that high‑energy offshore areas can support - places where a single well‑designed farm can deliver lower impact, fewer spatial conflicts, and greater sustainable value.

The future is high-energy sites

Having worked across regulatory, scientific, and community interfaces, I have seen how inherited structures allow process to eclipse purpose, limiting both environmental and economic gain. However, the decades of environmental monitoring now give Scotland an opportunity to reset.

The weight of evidence now points in a consistent direction: high‑energy, deeper‑water locations offer stronger currents, richer oxygenation, cooler temperatures, and lower parasite pressure - conditions that improve fish health and reduce environmental impact. Emerging sea‑based technologies mean we can place farms where biological conditions support success. This is an achievable shift that positions Scotland to lead globally, if regulation is willing to evolve. The next Parliament must make this the session that delivers, and why not do so with a more purposeful, fit‑for‑the‑future framework for aquaculture regulation?

Legacy sites as part of the solution

Sustainable growth depends on farming where the environment works with us. Offshore‑ready pens - deeper, wider, stronger - require larger, more resilient smolts due to their nets’ wider‑mesh design. This is where Scotland’s legacy inshore sites become part of the solution. Rather than being abandoned, they can, where appropriate, be repurposed into semi‑closed post‑smolt systems, growing fish to 500g–1kg in controlled environments with limited parasite risk and separation from wild stocks.

These facilities produce the robust smolts needed for high‑energy locations, reduce sea pen grow‑out by 3-6 months, and lower both incoming and outgoing environmental pressures. Other nations are already moving in this direction; Scotland must not fall behind.

A just transition for coastal communities

This evolution represents a just transition, protecting long‑established rural employment while creating new engineering, logistics, and operational roles linked to offshore‑capable farming. Yet the costs are high: a single semi‑closed 500‑tonne unit can cost £7-8 million – the same as an entire 4,000‑tonne open‑pen farm. This is a national-scale infrastructure that requires coordinated innovation funding, predictable regulation, acces to renewable energy, and improved consenting. Without these, Scotland risks losing competitiveness to countries moving faster.

A marine wealth fund for Scotland

Scotland could also adapt Norway’s resource‑rent model, which channels part of the value generated from publicly owned marine space back into national and municipal budgets. Norway uses these revenues to fund public infrastructure – including fixed links and tunnels that have transformed coastal connectivity. A Scotland Marine Wealth Fund should reinvest marine value into coastal infrastructure, support fixed‑link development, drive aquaculture innovation, expand rural grid capacity, and secure long‑term benefit for host communities.

Setting a shared direction

As a new Parliament sets its priorities, there is an opportunity to bring greater clarity and coherence to the governance of aquaculture in Scotland. A shared direction, established early through a White Paper or similar process, should provide a basis to modernise regulatory frameworks in line with marine science and operational reality. A more integrated, purposeful approach could support innovation, enable legacy sites to evolve, reinvest marine value in coastal communities, and position aquaculture as a strategic part of Scotland’s future marine economy.

Scotland has the core ingredients to lead. What will matter now is how clearly that intent is carried through into governance and policy.

After the election: The direction of travel is now structurally set; what remains is political choice. Once the new government is formed, the decisive questions will be how quickly it embraces regulatory reform, how it prioritises implementation of the new statutory framework, and how it balances environmental duty with economic opportunity. This series will conclude with a post‑election analysis that will explore those signals in real time – assessing what the incoming administration means for aquaculture, rural development, and Scotland’s wider environmental trajectory.