CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 3 10^th March 2023

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

PER­FORM­ANCE COMMITTEE

FOR DIS­CUS­SION

Title: CAIRNGORMS FOOT­PATH MAINTENANCE

Pre­pared by: COLIN SIMPSON, HEAD OF VIS­IT­OR SER­VICES & ACT­IVE TRAVEL

Pur­pose

This paper presents an over­view of the approach being developed to pri­or­it­ise main­ten­ance of the Nation­al Park’s path network.

Recom­mend­a­tion

The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee is asked to note the pro­posed pro­cess for identi­fy­ing future path main­ten­ance priorities.

Back­ground

1. The Cairngorms Nation­al Park con­tains many miles of paths and tracks of which just over 600 miles are classed as ​“Core Paths” in the Core Path Plan that was approved by the Nation­al Park Board and adop­ted in March 2015. Under the Land Reform (Scot­land) Act 2003, Nation­al Park Author­it­ies have a stat­utory duty to pro­duce a Core Path Plan that defines a sys­tem of paths that are con­sidered suf­fi­cient for the pur­pose of giv­ing the pub­lic reas­on­able access through­out their area. Although the Act also gives the Nation­al Park Author­ity the power to main­tain core paths if they wish, respons­ib­il­ity for doing so and any leg­al liab­il­it­ies still rest with the landowner.

Cur­rent system

1. At present the Nation­al Park Author­ity have path main­ten­ance agree­ments in place on a num­ber of sec­tions of path for his­tor­ic reas­ons. Typ­ic­ally this would occur where a new path was built and either grant con­di­tions or the agree­ment with the landown­er con­cern­ing con­struc­tion neces­sit­ated this. Due to its des­ig­na­tion as one of Scotland’s four Nation­al Long Dis­tance Routes, the Nation­al Park Author­ity also has a dir­ect oblig­a­tion to main­tain 16.5km of the Spey­side Way (of which 72km falls with­in the Nation­al Park). Although not form­ally respons­ible for the route in the same way, there is also a spe­cif­ic focus on the Deeside Way as extend­ing the route to Brae­mar is a NPPP4 pri­or­ity. Each year the Nation­al Park Author­ity makes a budget alloc­a­tion to cov­er the fol­low­ing areas of work:

   • Gen­er­al path maintenance
   • Spey­side Way main­ten­ance and improvement
   • Deeside Way main­ten­ance and improvement
   • Core paths and oth­er paths improvements

2. In broad terms the first of these budgets is used to cov­er more basic routine main­ten­ance activ­it­ies such as strim­ming and veget­a­tion clear­ance where con­tracts are let for the year. The remain­ing budgets are designed to allow more sig­ni­fic­ant inter­ven­tions to be made to improve the qual­ity of a route such as repair­ing or rebuild­ing dam­aged or poor sec­tions of path and replace­ment of gates or oth­er route fur­niture such as sign­posts. For more sig­ni­fic­ant pro­jects such as the rebuild­ing of 3km of the Spey­side Way through Anagach Woods under­taken in late 2022 extern­al grant fund­ing is often sourced.

3. While the cur­rent sys­tem of main­ten­ance and improve­ments to the path net­work has broadly worked, it has also been recog­nised that fur­ther improve­ments could be made. While some work will always be required due to unfore­seen events such as storm dam­age, much of the improve­ment activ­ity is based on inform­a­tion that has come from the CNPA ranger ser­vice or part­ner rangers who are those ​“on the ground”. How­ever Ranger patrols, par­tic­u­larly in recent years, have been focussed on loc­a­tions facing vis­it­or man­age­ment pres­sures and so, while some routes will be vis­ited very fre­quently, oth­ers in less pres­sured areas are not.

Future pro­pos­als

1. With a ranger ser­vice that cur­rently includes 5 per­man­ent rangers, 11 sea­son­al rangers and fur­ther train­ees it makes sense to con­tin­ue to use the loc­al know­ledge and skills of the ranger ser­vice to identi­fy pri­or­it­ies. How­ever, a more form­al sys­tem to ensure that all routes are vis­ited peri­od­ic­ally is being estab­lished and is sup­por­ted by a new GIS based sys­tem that will store map­ping and data regard­ing each route as well as details such as the date of pre­vi­ous and pro­grammed inspec­tions to assist in man­aging future main­ten­ance. The new GIS based data stor­age sys­tem was developed as was a mobile tab­let based sys­tem for gath­er­ing and input­ting data that was tested by one of the rangers in late 2022.

2. This sys­tem allows a ranger to walk (or poten­tially cycle) a route, gath­er­ing and record­ing data on aspects such as route con­di­tion as well as record­ing assets such as bridges sign­posts and their pre­cise loc­a­tion while out in the field. This data is sub­sequently syn­chron­ised with the GIS. In the ini­tial phase the ranger’s role is largely to under­take a visu­al inspec­tion of the route and to record the loc­a­tion of oth­er assets in order to fully pop­u­late the GIS. Where a third party is respons­ible for a route or any asset inform­a­tion on any actions required will con­tin­ue to be passed to the respons­ible party as occurs at present.

3. In sub­sequent years, the visu­al inspec­tion will be all that is required but where cer­tain types of assets are con­cerned – most not­ably bridges (CNPA is respons­ible for 6 of which 5 are on the Spey­side Way), a peri­od­ic engin­eer­ing sur­vey is also com­mis­sioned. Sim­il­arly, where a routine visu­al inspec­tion sug­gests there may be an issue, addi­tion­al spe­cial­ist inspec­tions can be commissioned.

4. Inform­a­tion added to the GIS will in future be used to pri­or­it­ise future work. Ulti­mately this is inten­ded to ensure the core path net­work remains fit for pur­pose and to estab­lish a pro­gramme of improve­ments, largely focused on improv­ing sig­nage and way­mark­ing and remov­ing bar­ri­ers, that in turn would increase the pro­por­tion of the net­work that is fit for its inten­ded use. In the short term much of the focus will be on low ground paths as these make the most sig­ni­fic­ant con­tri­bu­tion to oth­er NPPP4 ambi­tions such as provid­ing great­er access for wider range of abil­it­ies and encour­aging walk­ing as a means of improv­ing or main­tain­ing health.

Oth­er sup­port for path improvements

1. The Nation­al Park Author­ity will also con­tin­ue to provide some sup­port (includ­ing in some cases grant aid) to oth­ers such as com­munity groups that under­take a path pro­ject. This is likely to include the Out­door Access Trust for Scot­land (OATS) who under­take sig­ni­fic­ant repair work on upland paths and provide volun­teer­ing oppor­tun­it­ies in areas such as path build­ing thereby com­ple­ment­ing the Nation­al Park Authority’s dir­ect investment.

Colin Simpson 13 Feb­ru­ary 2023 colinsimpson@​cairngorms.​co.​uk

Appendix: — Data entry screen from tab­let and sub­sequent GIS map of features