Scottish Government

ANNEX B: RESPONDING TO THIS CONSULTATION PAPER: THE PROCESS

Responding to this consultation paper

We are inviting written responses to this consultation paper by Thursday 15th September 2005.

Please send your response:

or email to: ethnic-classifications@scotland.gsi.gov.uk

Queries

If you have any queries regarding the consultation process or the statistical aspects of this consultation, please contact Charles Brown on 0131 244 0324 between the hours of 10:00 and 16:00.

Alternatively, if you have any queries regarding the policy aspects of this consultation then please contact Michael Napier on 0131 244 5519 between the hours of 10:00 and 16:00.

Responses

We would be grateful if you would provide your response using the form enclosed with the covering letter or provided at Annex A. If you need to continue your response on a separate sheet/s, please indicate the question number clearly and enclose any additional sheets with the response form. Alternatively, this form may be completed electronically http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Ethnicity_Classifications_Consultation/ResponseForm.

This consultation, and all other Scottish Executive consultation exercises, can be viewed online on the consultation web pages of the Scottish Executive website at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations. You can telephone Freephone 0800 77 1234 to find out where your nearest public internet access point is.

The Scottish Executive now has an email alert system for consultations called SEConsult ( http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations/seconsult.aspx ). This system allows stakeholder individuals and organisations to register and receive a weekly email containing details of all new consultations (including web links). SEConsult complements, but in no way replaces SE distribution lists, and is designed to allow stakeholders to keep up to date with all SE consultation activity, and therefore be alerted at the earliest opportunity to those of most interest. We would encourage you to register.

Handling your response

We need to know how you wish your response to be handled and, in particular, whether you are happy for your response to be made public. Please complete the information at the top of the response and confidentiality form as this will ensure that we treat your response appropriately. If you ask for your response not to be published we will regard it as confidential, and we will treat it accordingly. All respondents should be aware that the Scottish Executive is subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and would therefore have to consider any request made to it under the Act for information relating to responses made to this consultation exercise.

What happens next?

Where respondents have given permission for their response to be made public these will be provided in the Scottish Executive Library and on the Scottish Executive Consultation website http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations by Thursday 13th October. We will check all responses where agreement to publish has been given for any potentially defamatory material before logging them in the library or placing them on the website. You can make arrangements to view responses by contacting the SE Library on 0131 244 4552. Responses can be copied and sent to you, but a charge may be made for this service.

Following the consultation closing date, all responses will be analysed and considered along with any other available evidence to help us reach a decision on how to develop the ethnicity classification in the 2011 Census. Following this, the SE in conjunction with GROS, will design a new ethnicity classification system and this will be piloted in spring 2006. A review of the Census pilot and further refinements/revisions to the classification system will be made in 2006/2007. A final report will be published in 2006/2007. This will cover the recommendations for i) an ethnic identity classification to be used in the 2008 Census rehearsal, ii) how organisations might collect ethnicity data and iii) how ethnicity data could be presented more effectively. Each stage of the Census ethnic identity classification review is outlined at Annex C.

Comments

If you have any comments about how this consultation exercise has been conducted, please send these to the mailbox or address detailed above.