Please enter any comments or views you wish to make on the Scottish Government Good Practice Principles for Community Benefits from Onshore Renewable Energy Developments in the box below. General Comments

We welcome the intention to provide good practice guidelines and principles for community benefits arising from onshore renewable energy developments in Scotland. This can be seen as contributing to a wider community empowerment process and, in turn, stronger, more resilient and supportive communities. We particularly support the suggestion that appropriately defined communities are engaged at pre-consent stage in discussions with developers so as to ensure the co-construction of appropriate community benefit schemes. Equally, we feel it entirely appropriate that the guidelines consider how funds are administered, including the disbursement of the funds and the monitoring and evaluation of impacts and outcomes. The Foreword to the document states that it is intended for developers of renewable energy projects in Scotland. We suggest it would be useful to repeat this in the introduction. In particular, while the document contains useful resources and ideas for stakeholders and communities, it is not written explicitly with their needs in mind and this should be more openly acknowledged