This guidance will help you and your Case Officer judge whether a basic Outcome Plan or an Outcome Plan incorporating specialist input is required to support a Proposal.
All applicants are expected to produce at least a basic Outcome Plan to support their Proposal.
However, you may be required to prepare an Outcome Plan with specialist input when:
- The Option guidance specifically asks for specialist or further detailed description of how you intend to carry out the Option, over and above that prescribed in the Option guidance
- Carrying out the activity as prescribed in the guidance you:
- are unlikely to deliver the operation successfully;
- would not meet the regional priority;
- risk negative impact;
- will deliver poor value for money without further precision, technical description or co-ordination tailored to your circumstances.
- You are choosing not to follow the standard prescription described in the Option guidance and intend to develop your own tailored management that will better meet the regional priority on your property, e.g. a grazing plan (agreed by Scottish Ministers) that differs from the grazing regime prescribed in the Option guidance. NB This can only be done where the Option guidance offers the choice
- In the Case Officer's opinion (having consulted with their specialist colleagues) it is thought that the 'who', 'what', 'where', 'when' and 'how' information that you are asked to provide within your online Proposal and Basic Outcome Plan will not adequately describe the activity within the circumstances of the case being assessed.
Judgement on the type and level of detail of specialist advice needed should be based on:
- An understanding of the regional priority the Proposal aims to meet
- An understanding of the assessment criteria the case officer will use to judge your proposal
- An understanding of your particular circumstances
- The information captured by the online Proposal pages
- The basic Outcome Plan content
- The Option guidance
- Feedback from your Case Officer
You can seek specialist input from whoever is qualified to provide it.
The name, status and qualifications of the person or organisation providing the required specialist input should be entered in Section 2 of the relevant Business Outcome Plan, Environment Outcome Plan or Forestry Outcome Plan.
The quality and relevance of the specialist input to the relevant regional priority/priorities will be checked by the Case Officer when assessing the Proposal