The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, which introduced access rights, also gave Scotland Local Authorities and National Parks new powers and duties as “Access Authorities”.  Section 25 required Access Authorities to set up one or more Local Access Forums (LAFs) to advise on the exercise of access rights in their area  and to help resolve disputes.

While the Land Reform Act did not specify how often LAFs should meet, the second edition of Local Access Forums, A Guide to Good Practice (2019) (see here) is clear about their importance.   An introductory paragraph headed  “Ambitious aims” reads:

“Local Access Forums have a key role to play in Scotland’s distinctive approach to managing outdoor access, and there are high aspirations for them. It is hoped that they will become valued new local institutions – independent, expert and trusted – that help access authorities, their staff, land managers and all who want to enjoy Scotland’s outdoors make a success of the new legislation. So it’s time to take stock and make sure we are aiming high enough.”

Important stuff!

(Declaration: I was a Director of Paths for All, who produced the Guidance with SNH but played no part in its production).

 

The role of LAFs during the Covid crisis

Given this, and the unprecedented restrictions on access during the two major lock-downs of the last year and the equally unprecedented numbers of people visiting the countryside in-between, one might have thought that the LAFs would have played a more prominent role in the last 12 months than ever before.   In fact the opposite has happened in our two National Parks.

In the LLTNPA there have been no meetings of the LAF for over a year and a half and none have been scheduled for 2021:

An insight into the reasons for this was given in a paper to the LLTNPA Audit and Risk Committee last Tuesday (see here) on actions relating to good governance that are behind schedule:

Two years since the LLTNPA first committed to drawing up a document setting out more clearly the remit of their LAF and roles of its members almost no progress has been made.  This should not have been difficult given NatureScot’s 78 page Guidance document – for once that organisation deserves praise – but despite LAF members having commented, nothing has progressed.  At a time when the LAF should have been active as never before, it appears part of the reason it has not met is the LLTNPA is not clear about its purpose – or perhaps they are only too clear and as a result have deliberately sidelined the LAF?

The position in the Cairngorms National Park Authority is only a little better.  Although their LAF met last month there was a 15 month gap between that and their previous meeting. Everyone appreciates that at the start of lockdown last year most public authorities were in chaos, but within a few months all had managed to set up on-line meeting systems.  After that meetings became easier to attend than ever before, as there was no need to factor in travelling.

This is well illustrated by the National Access Forum, a non-statutory body, set up by SNH/NatureScot to advise them.  While its March meeting was, unsurprisingly cancelled, it has since met on 5 June 2020, 16 September 2020 and 27 January 2021.  Representatives of the National Park Access Teams were present at all three meetings, raising questions about just why they failed to organise LAF meetings locally?  Indeed, unlike other Access Authorities, our National Park Authorities have a place on the National Access Forum based on the assumption that they exemplify good practice in relation to access in Scotland. If they cannot put their own house in order,  our National Park Authorities shouldn’t be on the National Access Forum.

Of the two other Access Authorities I checked, Highland Council LAFs appear to have stopped operating last year (again just when most needed – think the North Coast 500 chaos).  But, to their credit, Perth and Kinross Council, parts of which lie within the boundaries of Scotland’s two National Parks, continued with their meetings:

And that was despite significant cuts in their staff responsible for access matters (the Council has just agreed to spend £240k both this year and next on a new pilot Ranger Service).  All credit to them, but the only reasonable conclusion is that our National Park Authorities, who have greater access staff capacity than anywhere else (I am not claiming its sufficient) chose not to convene their LAFs when they were needed more than ever before.

 

Issues within our National Parks that might have been considered by their LAFs

In a series of posts over the last year I have shown how, in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park: more people have been charged with breaching the camping byelaws than in all the previous years together; the police have started to use the offence of culpable and reckless conduct against hillwalkers; and record numbers of people have been issued with parking tickets just for going out for a walk. (See here for summary and links to posts last year and here for further analysis of the impact of parking fines on West Loch Lomond).  If all of this should not have required the LLTNPA to consult the LAF, I am not sure what would.  But then the LLTNPA has a long history of sidelining its LAF dating back to the consultation on the camping byelaws back in 2014 (see here) and has delayed the production of its 2018-23 Outdoor Recreation Plan till June 2021 (see here).

It is more than a little ironic,therefore, that Don Milton, the chair of the LLTNPA LAF which rarely meets, has now been elected chair of the National Access Forum, which meets regularly.  Let’s hope he uses his position on the NAF to help put the LLTNPA LAF in order and expose their failure to produce an Outdoor Recreation Plan.

The CNPA approached lockdown and its release much more sympathetically than the LLTNPA.  There is very little evidence of folk being criminalised for going to the countryside in the Cairngorms.   That, however, does not mean there are no problems:

The meeting that the CNPA did hold in February contained a report on access casework.  The chart  shows record numbers of cases relating to access rights and another part of the report (see here) that most of these happened in just a few months, between July and October. (It would be interesting to know if  Highlands and Islands Enterprise unlawful closure of the road up Cairn Gorm is on their caseload).

Despite the surge in issues, it appears the CNPA did not see the need to consult their LAF about what was happening.

 

Discussion

The strategic issue here, which doesn’t just affect access, is that increasingly public authorities are resistant to any meaningful engagement.  Senior managers see engagement as risking targets, budgetary control and all the other superstructure associated with the top-down centralised control that has come to characterise Scotland.  The result, however, is the job of staff gets harder and harder, trying to have to do more with less. If instead Access Authorities turned this around and started to engage with the public Local Access Forums could become the public voice of the need for investment in infrastructure that the countryside in Scotland so badly needs.  Our National Parks could be taking the lead on this.

The late great Alan Blackshaw – whose research undermined the claims that there was an effective law of trespass in Scotland and so paved the way to access rights – said 15 years ago that the greatest threat to access rights in future would not be landowners (who simply don’t have the resources to stop people going onto their land) but public authorities.  Sadly, the evidence from the last year suggests he was right.