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Towards Solent Marine Planning (SoMaP)

Latest News

The Forum has just published a report on the information requirements for this project (Dec 09). You can download this report from the SoMaP resources page.

The SoMaP Project Officer has now produced a programme of stakeholder meetings.  These meetings are to be held geographically (to include: The Western Solent and Southampton, Eastleigh, Fareham and Hamble, Portsea, Havant, Gosport and Langstone, Chichester and West Sussex and the Isle of Wight) as well as by sectoral interest (to include: Planning for Sea Level Rise, Fishing, Marine Industry/Consultants).

The meetings will be used to disseminate information, find out how stakeholders would like to be involved in marine planning and obtain information on coastal policies and strategies.  Contact the Forum Office for more details.

The aim of the project is scope the possibility of a Solent marine planning system by starting to build a Solent-wide coastal and marine policy framework including a spatial database of plans, policies and activities by sector. Two strands to the project include: understanding what data is required at this initial stage to strategically assess different sectors plans and policies in the Solent and; to work closely with a range of stakeholders represented in all sectors and governance of the Solent to obtain this information and explore their views towards a Solent scale marine plan. 

The project is working to a programme agreed by the Steering Group and this includes the following 7 packages.

1. Establish a communications strategy.
2. Reiterate national progress on Marine Spatial Planning by the Defra implementation team back to stakeholders.
3. Scope with stakeholders the case for a marine plan at a Solent scale.
4. Understand the information requirements for a Solent Marine Planning System.
5. Agree pilot case study sectors, to represent pressing Solent issues and land and marine interactions, and use these to test the data and information.
6. Obtain and map all sectoral policies within the Solent; obtain further data as agreed in work package.
7. Evaluate project findings and make recommendations to stakeholders.