Scottish Government

RESPONDING TO THIS CONSULTATION PAPER

We are inviting written and electronic responses to this consultation paper by 19 February 2010. Please note that this is less than the minimum 12 weeks usually given for consultation responses to be submitted. This is a result of the timetable for the Legal Services (Scotland) Bill; as the outcome of this consultation may result in Scottish Government amendments to this Bill at Stage 2, any responses must be received by 19 February at the latest.

Please send your response with the completed Respondent Information Form (see "Handling your Response" below) to:

steven.day@scotland.gsi.gov.uk
or
Steven Day

If you have any queries contact Steven Day on 0131 244 2691.

We would be grateful if you (if appropriate) would use the consultation questionnaire provided or could clearly indicate in your response which questions or parts of the consultation paper you are responding to as this will aid our analysis of the responses received.

This consultation, and all other Scottish Government consultation exercises, can be viewed online on the consultation web pages of the Scottish Government website at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations.

The Scottish Government now has an email alert system for consultations ( 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 SG distribution lists, and is designed to allow stakeholders to keep up to date with all SG 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 and return the Respondent Information Form which forms part of the consultation (see annex B) 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 If you ask for your response not to be published we will regard it as confidential, and we will treat it accordingly.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 Government are 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.

Next steps in the process

Where respondents have given permission for their response to be made public (see the attached Respondent Information Form) and after we have checked that they contain no potentially defamatory material, responses will be made available to the public in the Scottish Government Library and on the Scottish Government consultation web pages. You can make arrangements to view responses by contacting the SG Library on 0131 244 4552. Responses can be copied and sent to you, but a charge may be made for this service.

What happens next ?

Following the closing date, all responses will be analysed and considered along with any other available evidence to help us reach a decision on the regulation of will writers. We aim to issue a report on this consultation process in Spring 2010 and, should there be support, introduce an amendment to introduce regulation for will writers into the Legal Services (Scotland) Bill at Stage 2 in the Spring.

Comments and complaints

If you have any comments about how this consultation exercise has been conducted, please send them to:

Name and title:
Steven Day
Address:

E-mail:
steven.day@scotland.gsi.gov.uk

More details on the Scottish Government consultation process can be found at Annex C.