Towards Solent Marine Planning (SoMaP)
The SoMaP project is now complete, the final reports can be downloaded from this page and the resources section.
- The Final Project Report - Evaluations and Recommendations, Dec 2010 is now available to download.
- The SoMaP project included an analysis of the role of stakeholders in the marine planning process (pdf file).
- The Solent Forum has now launched its Solent Marine Planning portal that was developed as part of the SoMaP project.
- The conference proceedings of the Southern Marine Planning Conference are now available to download (pdf file). Conference presentations are available on request. The conference attracted 79 delegates and the delegate feedback results revealed that the conference was received as very useful (the average rating of the overall conference was 4.1 on a scale of 1 to 5, where 5 was rated extremely useful).
The aim of the project was to 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 included: 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 followed a programme agreed by the Steering Group and included the following 7 packages.
- Establish a communications strategy.
- Reiterate national progress on Marine Spatial Planning by the Defra implementation team back to stakeholders.
- Scope with stakeholders the case for a marine plan at a Solent scale.
- Understand the information requirements for a Solent Marine Planning System.
- Agree pilot case study sectors, to represent pressing Solent issues and land and marine interactions, and use these to test the data and information.
- Obtain and map all sectoral policies within the Solent; obtain further data as agreed in work package.
- Evaluate project findings and make recommendations to stakeholders.
Download the completed work programme.
