Ten days ago I was in Balquidder and as far as I could tell most of the unlawful no access signs along the shore of Loch Voil are still there (see here). Some of these signs pre-date the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 which created access rights and the formation of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA).
18 months ago in a report to their Local Access Forum LLTNPA officers excused their failure to do anything on a lack of complaints. The LLTNPA’s statutory duty as an access authority to uphold access rights does not only apply in cases where there has been a complaint. The real explanation lies in the unwillingness of senior managers at the LLTNPA to use the Park’s resources to take on the landowners who continue to blatantly ignore access rights.
Having allowed the local landowners to leave no access signs in place for over 10 years, the LLTNPA then turned the north shore of Loch Voil into a camping management zone under the camping byelaws. These created an exclusion to access rights along Loch Voil and banned camping between 1st March and 30th October except for one small permit area. This effectively rewarded those local landowners who had ignored access rights for the first ten years of the LLTNPA’s existence. It also enabled the LLTNPA to use their resources to enforce local landowners wishes for eight months of the year.
An official eight month a year ban camping ban was still, however, not good enough for some landowners and the “No camping” signs – which imply no camping year round – were allowed to remain in place. It would have been easy enough for the LLTNPA to contact local landowners and say “now we’ve helped you, its your turn to help us and remove the unlawful signs” but they didn’t.
There is no public transport down Balquhidder but soon after we had parked our car where this forest track meets the public road an LLTNPA van with two rangers drove past. It was presumably checking to see whether any people were camping illegally (breaking the byelaws is a criminal offence).
A couple of minutes after seeing the Rangers we walked up this forestry road to find the gate locked, an obstruction in terms of the law. One suspects the rangers are so busy policing campers that none has ever been allowed out their car long enough to check the access to various paths and tracks in the glen. This is a completely wasted resource.
The LLTNPA’s Ranger Service must have driven by the various signs and access obstructions along Loch Voil hundreds of time now but done nothing. It would not take much for Rangers to approach irresponsible local landowners, just as they approach members of the public, and ask them to respect the Scottish Outdoor Access Code and the law. But they don’t.
At one time in Scotland ranger services played an important role in facilitating access to the countryside but now in the LLTNPA they are forced to serve as one-sided police force which acts in the interests of a few selfish landowners and shows little interest in fairness.
The LLTNPA’s National Park Partnership Plan (see here) refers to the importance of equality of access in several places but contains not a single mention of access rights.
A pre-condition of people being able to enjoy ALL the countryside – the LLTNPA’s “plan” is limited to “the most popular places and routes” – is access rights. Locked gates and locked car parks, such as that at Sallochy (see here), are absolutely no good for people with disabilities. Indeed in its failure to uphold access rights within the National Park and to create infrastructure tsupport this the LLTNPA has made equality of access, which it claims to care so much about, worse not better. It needs to get the basics right.
The papers for the meeting of the LLTNPA Local Access Forum (LAF) in April 2022 referred to the signs in Balquhidder but strangely those for the next meeting in November 2022 (see here) did not. The LAF, which is supposed to advise the LLTNPA on the upholding of access rights and officially meets twice a year, has not met since. As a consequence the LAF has also been excluded from commenting on the draft NPPP or raising concerns such as I have described in this post.
This is history repeating itself.. The LLTNPA failed to convene their LAF a single time in 2021, despite all the access difficulties that emerged during Covid, and before that they ensured the LAF did not meet at all during the extended consultation on the camping byelaws.
These failures to uphold access rights can only get worse if Scottish Ministers are allowed to push ahead with their misconceived proposals to focus National Parks on addressing climate change and biodiversity, rather than people’s ability and rights to enjoy nature. I hope Lorna Slater , the Minister responsible for National Parks will think again, re-iterate the important role National Parks should be playing in enabling people being able to get out and enjoy the countryside and insist outdoor recreation and access rights are fully embedded in a revised National Park Partnership Plan.
If she doesn’t, however, the logical conclusion would be to remove the LLTNPA’s responsibilities as an Access Authority and transfer these and the staff responsible to local authorities. The current situation in which the LLTNPA is allowed to ignore their responsibilities in relation to access rights and whatever anyone tries to say or do makes no difference must not be allowed to continue.
I believe a roads authority can order landowners to remove roadside barbed wire.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1984/54/part/VIII/crossheading/roadside-dangers
Landowner s do not give a toss for the public they do nothing to me rain rods and grass areas but they will call the police to get you to f……. Of there so called land we have the access right it’s time to shuve this up landowners arsed let’s get this sorted out Scottish go if you are kissing landowners arsed why we pay a substantial amount to landowners it’s time this was stopped give them f…… All
As a wild camper and Angler I have total respect for other people’s property and would never go on other peoples land. Right to roam only means you can WALK though private land not camp or fish ! How who you like it if people camped in your garden ?? Have some respect and stay off private land ! If these signs weren’t up Scotland would be an absolute mess the amount of wild campers that ruin the land is disgusting! Keep them out I say !
Right to roam covers camping and a whole range of other activities but not angling. Right to roam does not give you a right to walk, camp, picnic etc in people’s gardens. The Scottish outdoor access code explains all this
Transferring to local authorities is not the answer as several of them do nothing to enforce access rights either in my experience.
An answer would be an independent, adequately resourced access enforcement authority with real powers. Not going to happen IMO as the current situation where Scotland has access rights in theory but not in practice suits the Scottish Government and their landowning friends just fine.
I’m currently walking in England and when I encounter access issues ask myself, “Would the Scottish legislation solve this?” The answer is usually “No” as the loopholes and case law around “curtilage of a dwelling” would make sure that nothing changed, and lack of enforcement and barbed wire fences would do the rest.
Please don’t blame the rangers. One week’s training, little more than one day of which is conflict resolution which is hopelessly inadequate when confronted by drunk, aggressive ‘campers’, (by comparison (police training is 22 weeks and training is ongoing throughout a career), spend all day cleaning up rubbish and fly tipping, avoiding human sh1t, expected to legally enforce bylaws which could potentially ruin someone’s future by giving them a criminal record (for camping in the wrong place for heavens sake!), trying to explain that cutting down mature trees and trying to burn green wood doesn’t work, lighting vast fires on peat soils is a life threatening thing (just ask Greek fireplane pilots how dangerous wild fire is!), having to travel large distances to work, awkward hours, weekend working, often lone working, all for less than £10 an hour…
I hoped I had made it clear that I hold lltnpa senior management responsible for what they do. You are right about lack of training – was not always the case – and low wages.
They do have to take some responsibility for their actions. Without their footsoldiers the fat cats at the top would have no power over us. If your job involves bashing around in a huge black RIB in paramilitary uniform staring at members of the public through powerful binoculars, maybe you should have a bit of a think.
Part of the problem is from the above they really do think they are essential and making a positive difference. They are in the main too young to have experienced the Loch before the National Park or they would know they aren’t. The same problems exist, the only differences are the proliferation of pointless “no” signs, the oppressive surveillance and “interactions” and the fact that great chunks of the islands are buoyed off with signs threatening draconian penalties under wildlife protection legislation.
As this blog has regularly featured, restrictions are in effect only applied to private individuals in the accessible bits of the park. You can’t touch the trees, “they” can decide they are non native species and cut them all down. You can’t enter a bay in case you disturb birds (which were there before the restrictions) but “they” can shoot the wallabies.
Most campers are very aware of the dangers of fire, most will pick up and take any ltter or waste away with them and leave only footprints. Many of the large landowners do not even live in Scotland but make their money from the land on their large estates eg. Shooting.
A number of rather sweeping statements In this post which nothing but personal opinion may justify. Litter is still a huge problem for everyone, even in places where good natured and “tidy” people might be expected to leave a place they tramp through so much more pure than they found it?
As regards Absentee Land Owners: although a ‘bone of contention’ even today, this state of affairs has always been a ‘truism’ right across Scotland. No change therefore in many hundreds of years. Lairds through past centuries were notorious. some cleared their land Holdings simply to increase asset value. Their estates were run for them by locally employed factors, The owner might appear for a few months each year to occupy and perhaps hunt on their land Holding. Their investment employed and provided for much local employment, just as it does today. It is extremely doubtful that since WW2 many large estates generate any net profit from this enterprise to fund a profligate “lifestyle” elsewhere anymore. Rather the reverse. What is certainly true ….value of any large Land Holding is a convertible asset, which notional value can be used to underwrite loans and negotiate ever greater loans. Ownership does confer a right to entertain just a few selected friends and business associates to enjoy the asset. So very little has changed in this use of asset worth for hundreds of years either. although steadily public opinion across Scotland can be said to have become more motivated to see changes ? .
While there may well be a better way, much of the opposition to private land ownership is purely ideological from people who want everything owned by the state.
As LLTPA proves every day, in practice if you think private ownership is bad, try public. The park is the only substantial part of Scotland where the access legislation doesn’t fully apply. Then there’s FLS who charge market rates to lease their campsites and £10 per night to overnight in their car parks during the summer only which is seen as a great concession from an outright ban.
The litter thing is not confined to the countryside and is caused by a minority of scum whose behaviour should not be an excuse for collective punishment. Part of the problem is that it is one of those crimes that “the police” deem to be beneath their dignity to enforce. I live near a state school which claims all sorts of “eco” awards and spends much valuable lesson time on green indoctrination, but takes no responsibility for its pupils behaviour at lunchtime and the resulting litter and mess.
Unfortunately as someone who spends most of my time at these lochs … there is hardly anyone these days that look after the land and they cause so much damage to the environment. Leaving human poo rubbish and cutting down bits of trees for fires it’s disgusting.
What’s your solution?
In fact they have an insignificant impact on a tiny part of the park (the vast majority of it is effectively inaccessible to humans). LLTPA have to make a big thing of it to justify their existence and their desire to restrict access to it. It is how they got to exist in the first place and how they got their ever more restrictive byelaws.
How to improve the situation? Provide actual facilities. Of course people crap in the woods, where are the toilets? One island has composting toilets which are often locked out of use. Boats and campervans have toilets but where do you empty them? Septic tank safe toilet fluids are readily available but the response of councils to the demand was to put notices on the few public toilets that exist forbidding emptying.
Litter we have covered extensively on this blog, again there are hardly any bins and those that do exist have notices forbidding their use for anything but litter.
Again the tree cutting is vastly exaggerated; people have been cutting scrub trees in the area for many years with no significant impact on what is anyway the tiny part of the park actually available for recreation. They don’t really care about trees, they cut enough down themselves, what they want is no people doing anything.
Accept that people want to use the countryside for recreation and provide the facilities they need – if there is too much demand then open up more areas they can use. again by providing the facilities. In this way rural communities can have the facilities they want like shops, pubs and public transport because all of these things need numbers to survive which the full time community can’t provide.
Most of these issues are what people who live in these areas have to deal with on a daily basis, for no pay or training. As always, there are two sides to the story….
Lmfao a TYPICAL RANGERS TYRANT TALKING SHXXTE GET A REAL JOB FFS
Stop moaning you rangers yogi bears. You are a shower of lazy power mad xxxxx
The forest rangers at sallochy campsite Rowardennan are EXCELLENT the campsite is spotless peaceful and very reasonably priced. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone.
Hi Theresa, the campsite may be excellent but that is irrelevant to the point at issue which is that others are being prevented from using the car park there, Nick
?HOW MUCH HAVE YOU BEEN PAID TO BE A BOOT LICKER TO YOUR LOCAL RANGERS EHH ! ? AND HOW MUCH DO YOU PAY YAR LOCAL RANGERS TO PREVENT TOURISTS FROM CAMPING £££££££ MONEY TALKS EHHH TARESA
Ad to learn of the current problems surrounding Balquhidder. For many many years I looked upon this area as the place where Rob Roy Mcgregor and his family are buried RIP. in that little churchyard. It’s a shame that Scottish history is being forwarded for all the wrong reasons.
(LLTNPA) have one role, make money!
They manage fiscal income and nothing else through blatant schemes that are designed to extort as much money as possible from the people attempting to enjoy the countryside.
Time for (LLTNPA) and the shady operators using it as a piggybank to be thrown out of Scotland.