This letter from David Fallows about the need for the Cairngorms National Park Authority to webcast Board Meetings speaks for itself. It’s something I have been calling for for both our National Parks ever since the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority unlawfully held 13 Board Meetings in secret to decide their camping byelaws. David’s intervention is particularly welcome because he is a former Board Member of the CNPA.
Its worth noting, however, the context for David’s letter. The NPA website (see here) states “CNPA staff have ceased all site visits and field work”. In effect this deems work which is aimed at protecting the natural environment as “non-essential” during the crisis. But at the same time its business as usual when it comes to supporting businesses through the planning system:
The only changes that the CNPA have made to the planning system is that site visits won’t be conducted – many people would see these as “essential” to enable Board Members to understand the impact of planning applications fully – and meetings will no longer be conducted in public but by video conference. If that is the case its even more essential that ALL these meetings are webcast.
What is essential work?
As an addendum, its worth noting the unnecessary problems that are being created by government’s advice on who should be working during the corona crisis. This is centred on what is essential or not, rather than what is safe. What’s deemed essential has varied between the UK and Scottish governments and been decided differently from organisation to organisation across the UK. Here are a couple of examples from our National Parks.
While the CNPA is continuing with the planning system as normal, i.e classed it as essential, the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority says its NOT processing new planning applications because written notices can’t be safely put up on lampposts. So, processing new planning applications has been deemend essential in one National Park but not the other.
The CNPA, as I quoted above, has stopped its staff undertaking field surveys in the great outdoors, while Nicola Sturgeon has clarified that window cleaners can go on cleaning windows as usual. I am sure both are safe, but if anything field surveys are even safer, so why is one essential and the other not? The consequences for the people involved are serious. Many of the people who depend on field surveys for their employment, and some of whom live in our National Parks, are now, completely unnecessarily, out of work. Unlike CNPA employees, those who are self-employed have been left without any income and are having to wait to get money, either through Universal Credit or for the payments the UK government has promised to the self-employed that are due to be paid………. in June.
Surely our governments and public authorities could be managing this crisis a lot better than they are. All the more reason why all their decision-making needs to broadcast to us all as David Fallows stated in his letter.
It seems to me inevitable that we will have sub-optimal decision making in the early stages of what is increasingly a crisis of both health and (public and institutional) hysteria! I’m willing to allow some leeway in the early weeks, but we must press for more rational assessment as the weeks and months pass by – and especially as the lockdown restrictions are eased
Where I live in Wales, the decisions to effectively remove any access to the countryside havebeen driven by irrational fears of visitor influx, without regard for the impact on locals, or any consideration of whether responsible usage that would be a benefit for health – and safer than the alternative. It’s surely ridiculous that in towns like Haverfordwest we have people congregating in tiny parks, while literally within sight there are hundreds of miles of open countryside that could be accessed. It can’t be beyond the wit of man to set up arrangements that allow for this while avoiding mass gatherings for BBQs and ice cream on the beach.
This week, locals at and Pen y Cwm have been fined for surfing – it being deemed unnecessary – even though they walked separately from their doorsteps to a deserted cove with no road access. The same happened at other locations. Meanwhile, there are more cyclists passing my door than I’ve seen in years – this much is great but why is one activity deemed okay and not another? The answer, sadly, is a combination of fear and ignorance, dressed up as putative deterrent – but surely we can do better than this?
Is it not the case that in recent decades the general public across the UK have been subjected to a steady “drip feed” of misinformation about the country side. There is a media obsession with how dirty farmyard mud is , to the regulatory requirement for paved paths, proper kissing gates to permit disabled access. The scare stories extend all the way to the dire and true warnings about Lyme disease across heaths and woodlands , to the risk of meeting a fiercesome dog or a stranger up to no good. The rip feed continues through broadcasts such as countryfile who populate their reports with phrases such as ” we have special permission” ..”we have been granted a permit” ..”A special licence is necessary to do this…or that”. Now in the current situation the Uk hears of volunteer RNLI and Mountain rescue teams effectively asking Government to require the public to stay at home -off the water and hills-.mainly because volunteers could be placed in danger if they were tasked to effect a rescue..(even if that rescue was never requested) The fear of open ‘unregulated space’ is being stoked with suggestions that open spaces, waterways and coastal areas with traditional freedoms are so full of risks access must be locked down. How can this misconception about rural life be educated out of the minds of the next generation who exist inm an urban setting ? This summer it is going to become increasingly important to disconnect people from their ‘smart phone’ connected lives and get them out to complete the harvest, now in peril due to lack of cheap farm labour teams. Young people and many Students now have so much time on their hands. Many rural communities across the UK should be encouraging local people to learn how to subsist and stand on their own two feet with nature again…this includes social distancing in the countryside. Who can now tell what might be about to happen to any man-made technical system, complex engineered structure, or digitally controlled power base. If this new virus were to keep ‘morphing’ ahead faster than ‘catch up’ immunisation efforts to curb this manifestation of it, we will need traditional countryside skills again. ? Stopping outdoor education and discouraging practical learning in wild places is a looming catastrophy..
Today instead of going to our park (for exercise)I deceided to hop over the burn into a small no mans land shrouded by motorway chemical plants and main roads and just sit in the silence (nocars still chemicals no noise )and take a sneaky relax only for me to spot isparrow hawk heron ducks wrens and small trout butterfly’s bees and one donkey and someone had written (in pink spray paint )on this poor donkey llatnp there’s some hopefull people out there I thought maybe we aren’t doomed after all