250214Paper1Annex2SuggestedChangestoFireByelawWording

Annex 2, Paper 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Page 1 of 6

Annex 2 Byelaw word­ing changes pro­posed and con­sidered with sub­sequent amendments.

Query/​suggestion grouped by theme	Change con­sidered and con­clu­sion reached
Defin­i­tions
1 In the defin­i­tion of ​“Fire­place” it is sug­ges­ted that the final words ​“or oth­er mater­i­al” are not required.	Con­sidered wheth­er this aided the defin­i­tion and con­cluded no change required as this avoided lim­it­ing the defin­i­tion based on con­struc­tion materials.
2 Fire­places – does this include port­able items such as firepits or bowls.	Con­sidered wheth­er these should be pro­hib­ited in the same way as open fires. In terms of risk those used out­doors are sim­il­ar to fires or barbeques where flam­mable mater­i­als / sparks can escape are likely so agreed to include these as pro­hib­ited items. Use on private prop­erty with per­mis­sion is already exemp­ted so this would still allow organ­ised group use on pur­pose built sites.
3 Stove — more clar­ity / clear­er defin­i­tion required on what is included as some have sim­il­ar­it­ies with fires eg sol­id fuel or wood burn­ing stoves.	Con­sidered wheth­er dif­fer­ent stove types should be per­mit­ted. As with 2 above, risk is high­er so agreed they be pro­hib­ited. Stoves now defined as ​“a camp­ing stove man­u­fac­tured as a camp­ing stove or cook­er (exclud­ing any wood or coal-based system)”.
4 Stove — does this include a port­able camp wood burn­er (these can include a flue fit­ted to a tent so is not an ​“open fire”).	Con­sidered wheth­er these are treated in the same as with bothy fire­places but con­cluded that as with 2 and 3 above they should still be pro­hib­ited as they are used in the

Annex 2, Paper 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Page 2 of 6

| 5 Stoves – are those in vehicles eg motorhomes or camper­vans included / excluded. | out­doors with attend­ant risk. While some are used for heat­ing pur­poses eg a ​“hot tent” use would mostly be from Octo­ber to March when byelaw does not apply, and landown­er per­mis­sion exemp­tions could still allow this at oth­er times for the likes of organ­ised groups. Con­sidered wheth­er any fire source in a vehicle should be per­mit­ted. As with 2, 3 and 4 above agreed gas stoves or sim­il­ar are per­mit­ted but oth­ers should be pro­hib­ited as they are not in a build­ing. Off sea­son use for heat­ing would mostly be out­side byelaw peri­od. At oth­er times camp­site exemp­tions would apply allow­ing this on man­aged sites and landown­er per­mis­sion could allow this in oth­er cir­cum­stances eg a tem­por­ary event camp­site. | | 6 Cur­til­age as used in the draft word­ing doesn’t fit the defin­i­tions used in Scot­tish Out­door Access Code (SOAC). | Con­sidered wheth­er this might add to con­fu­sion and have updated word­ing accord­ingly. Defin­i­tion now includes both cur­til­age of build­ings that are not a dwell­ing (SOAC 3.18) and suf­fi­cient adja­cent land for pri­vacy around a dwell­ing (SOAC 3.14−3.16). | | 7 ​“Avoid­able dam­age” appears in the defin­i­tions but is not then used else­where in the draft word­ing. | ​“Avoid­able” doesn’t add a sig­ni­fic­ant bene­fit and was not used else­where in the draft word­ing so word­ing changed to simply ​“dam­age”. | | 8 Ten­ant — defin­i­tion is restric­ted to leases of a year of more, but some leases are com­monly giv­en for peri­ods of less than this or a licence may be used instead of a ten­ancy. This is par­tic­u­larly the case with | Con­sidered wheth­er the time­frame was neces­sary and con­cluded it wasn’t so word­ing updated to exclude any timeframe. |

Annex 2, Paper 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Page 3 of 6

| sea­son­al agri­cul­tur­al ten­ants that may use fires for land man­age­ment | | | Incon­sist­ency or poten­tial ambi­gu­ity | | | 1 Use of terms land man­ager, landown­er could cause ambi­gu­ity | Con­sidered bene­fits of using both terms ​“land man­ager” and ​“landown­er”. As ​“land man­ager” was not sub­sequently used in the draft word­ing land manger defin­i­tion is removed and all ref­er­ences use the term landown­er. | | 2 Dif­fer­ent build­ing / prop­erty types are referred to which can cre­ate poten­tial for ambi­gu­ity. Included the sug­ges­tion that hol­i­day prop­er­ties could be treated the same as dwell­ing houses. | Con­sidered bene­fit of includ­ing build­ings used for hol­i­day accom­mod­a­tion in the defin­i­tion of dwell­ing house and agreed to change this to aid clar­ity around all build­ings used for hab­it­a­tion. | | 3 Slightly dif­fer­ing word­ing for sec­tion 4 — Fires and sec­tion 5 Barbeques – ​“It shall be an offence under these byelaws for any per­son without law­ful author­ity to light or use a bar­be­cue any­where in the Nation­al Park” – the word ​“any­where” appears in sec­tion 4 but not in sec­tion 5. | Con­sidered reword­ing and agreed to remove word ​“any­where” as its use didn’t add any sig­ni­fic­ant bene­fit. | | Nature of the offence | | | 1 Sug­ges­tion that use of gas bar­be­cues should be included in pro­hib­ited activ­it­ies | Con­sidered sug­ges­tion and con­cluded it be dis­reg­arded as gas barbeques have a built-in fuel con­tain­er which does not allow flam­mable mater­i­als to escape as is pos­sible with a tra­di­tion­al barbe­que. | | 2 Sug­ges­tion we should allow dis­pos­able barbeques used | Con­sidered sug­ges­tion and con­cluded it be dis­reg­arded as these are still an open fire source where flam­mable mater­i­als can |

Annex 2, Paper 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Page 4 of 6

| respons­ibly, removed and dis­posed cor­rectly | escape and cause igni­tion. A fur­ther factor is that their dis­pos­able nature means many are not used respons­ibly caus­ing wider envir­on­ment­al issues. | | 3 Sug­ges­tion that word­ing should spe­cific­ally include wil­ful fire rais­ing | Con­sidered mer­its of reword­ing to include this but con­cluded that as this is already an offence pun­ish­able under oth­er nation­al legis­la­tion fur­ther inclu­sion in a byelaw is not required. | | 4 Sug­ges­tion that word­ing in sec­tion 4 should spe­cific­ally include cigar­ette | Con­sidered mer­its of reword­ing to include this but con­cluded that cigar­ettes are adequately covered by ​“any oth­er thing so as to be likely to cause a fire” and list­ing every pos­sible igni­tion source indi­vidu­ally would be unreal­ist­ic. | | 5 Sug­ges­tion that word­ing should cov­er dam­age or danger to domest­ic anim­als or live­stock where ​“per­son or wild­life” are referred to. | Con­sidered this would be use­ful and so updated word­ing to include live­stock. | | 6 Police Scot­land advice is that Park Author­ity staff would not have enforce­ment rights on private prop­erty where pri­vacy rights apply under the Scot­tish Out­door Access Code eg gar­dens. | Con­sidered reword­ing and agreed to accept Police Scot­land advice. Word­ing updated to remove any ref­er­ences to restric­tions on fires / barbeques in loc­a­tions such as private gar­dens. Where any activ­ity is believed to cause sig­ni­fic­ant danger (includ­ing dur­ing a peri­od of high fire risk) oth­er nation­ally applic­able legis­la­tion already allows enforce­ment by Police Scot­land or Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice. | | 7 Sug­ges­tion that we remove the part about not hav­ing a fire or | Con­sidered both com­plex­ity around relat­ing pro­hib­i­tion to times of high fire risk and |

Annex 2, Paper 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Page 5 of 6

| barbe­que in own homes / prop­erty dur­ing time of high fire risk. | Police Scot­land advice in 6 above. Agreed to reword to exclude high fire risk ref­er­ences. | | 8 Sug­ges­tion that byelaw should exclude fires with­in a bothy dur­ing peri­ods of high fire risk so as to align with cara­van sites. | Con­sidered but sug­ges­tion no longer rel­ev­ant in view of changes that will remove ref­er­ences to peri­ods of high fire risk as described in 7 above. | | Peri­od for which byelaw applies | | | 1 Mul­tiple responses sug­ges­ted dif­fer­ent vari­ations to the byelaw peri­od includ­ing chan­ging to all year. | Sug­ges­tions not con­sidered rel­ev­ant to this con­sulta­tion as they don’t dir­ectly relate to word­ing and this ele­ment has already been con­sul­ted on and the time peri­od approved by the Board hav­ing con­sidered the range of responses and the evid­ence provided for the earli­er con­sulta­tion. | | 2 Mul­tiple responses sug­ges­ted some issues with using peri­ods of high fire risk as part of the byelaw – in part due to poten­tial dif­fer­ences across the area but also wheth­er this was appro­pri­ate in areas such as private gar­dens. | Addressed through decisions around remov­ing high fire risk ref­er­ences described under ​“Nature of the Offence” sec­tions 6, 7 and 8 above. | | Enforce­ment | | | 1 Sug­ges­tion that offence is widened to include being ​“in attend­ance at” or ​“tend­ing a fire” so as to allow enforce­ment where mul­tiple people are in attend­ance and a single per­son can­not eas­ily be iden­ti­fied as the one that lit the fire. | Con­sidered and accep­ted Police Scot­land advice that word­ing needed updated. Fol­low­ing fur­ther leg­al advice this has been reworded to make the offence ​“light, have or tend a fire in the Nation­al Park”. | | 2 Pro­vi­sion of details – sug­ges­tion that fur­ther inform­a­tion should be gathered such as date of birth and car regis­tra­tions. | Con­sidered and com­pared with sim­il­ar byelaws and sub­sequently updated to include date of birth and con­tact details. Car regis­tra­tions not included as ownership / |

Annex 2, Paper 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Page 6 of 6

| 3 Sug­ges­tion that the pro­posed level of fines is inad­equate and should be high­er. | regis­tra­tion of a vehicle doesn’t neces­sar­ily aid identi­fy­ing an indi­vidu­al who is present. Levels of fines are set by the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment so not with­in the con­trol of the Park Authority. |