250214Paper1SeasonalFireManagementByelaw

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Paper 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Page 1 of 4

For decision

Title: Sea­son­al Fire Man­age­ment Byelaw

Pre­pared by: Colin Simpson, Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices and Act­ive Travel

Stra­tegic context

1. The Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan has two sec­tions that provide the stra­tegic con­text for this work. a) A7 — Fire Man­age­ment: Devel­op and agree a Nation­al Park approach to camp­fires and bar­be­cues. b) Policy C4 (d) – Redu­cing fire risk by lim­it­ing or exclud­ing bar­be­cues and open fires in key areas of the Nation­al Park, such as in areas of wood­land and peatland.

2. An ini­tial con­sulta­tion on wheth­er a byelaw should be intro­duced to man­age fires and bar­be­cues in spring 2024 showed a large major­ity of respond­ents in favour of a fire man­age­ment byelaw and gave the Park Author­ity a strong man­date for change. The Park Author­ity board sub­sequently agreed to devel­op a sea­son­al fire man­age­ment byelaw.

3. As required by the legis­la­tion, a fur­ther pub­lic con­sulta­tion on the draft word­ing was car­ried out from 23 Septem­ber to 16 Decem­ber 2024. Details of the con­sulta­tion pro­cess includ­ing the con­sulta­tion doc­u­ment and pro­posed word­ing can be found here.

Pur­pose

1. This paper updates board mem­bers on the responses to the con­sulta­tion and includes a revised pro­pos­al for the word­ing of the byelaw. Fol­low­ing approv­al of a final word­ing by the Board, the pro­posed byelaw will be sub­mit­ted to Scot­tish Min­is­ters for approval.

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Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Paper 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Page 2 of 4

Recom­mend­a­tions

1. The Board is asked to: a) Note the mat­ters raised dur­ing the pub­lic con­sulta­tion and the pro­posed responses to these and, b) Agree the revised word­ing of the fire man­age­ment byelaw for sub­mis­sion to Scot­tish Min­is­ters for approv­al as per the Nation­al Park (Scot­land) Act 2000.

Stake­hold­er engagement

1. Stake­hold­er engage­ment has been under­taken through­out the devel­op­ment of the fire byelaw pro­pos­als. Of par­tic­u­lar note is recent engage­ment with Police Scot­land, the Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice and the Scot­tish Wild­fire For­um on prac­tic­al­it­ies around the intro­duc­tion and enforce­ment of any byelaw which was under­taken in par­al­lel with the pub­lic consultation.

Implic­a­tions

1. While there are no sig­ni­fic­ant implic­a­tions arising dir­ectly from the con­sulta­tion pro­cess, sub­sequent imple­ment­a­tion of a sea­son­al fire byelaw will have resource implic­a­tions in terms of fin­ances and staff­ing. The draft budget for ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ to be presen­ted to the board in March 2025 has been pre­pared with resource to cov­er imple­ment­a­tion costs. This includes sig­nage and com­mu­nic­a­tions as well as addi­tion­al ranger time dur­ing sum­mer 2025 and train­ing for Park Author­ity and part­ner rangers to ensure that there are staff on the pre­pared for imple­ment­a­tion of a byelaw. The Park Authority’s good rela­tion­ship with Police Scot­land will con­tin­ue through­out the year and imple­ment­a­tion of a fire byelaw both in terms of the joint patrols between rangers and police officers at key sites and times, and the advice and train­ing for staff on prac­tic­al enforce­ment and implementation.

Con­sulta­tion Summary

1. Responses: The online sur­vey on the draft word­ing of a byelaw received a total of 109 responses. With 47% res­id­ents and 43% vis­it­ors, 58% male and 42% female and 12% from part­ner organ­isa­tions or com­munit­ies there was a reas­on­able bal­ance of respond­ents. Writ­ten responses were received from a fur­ther 10 indi­vidu­als or organ­isa­tions and dir­ect dis­cus­sions were held with Police Scot­land, the Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice and the Scot­tish Wild­fire For­um. Fur­ther details on the responses are giv­en in Annex 1.

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Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Paper 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Page 3 of 4

1. Level of sup­port for the pro­posed word­ing: 58% of respond­ents agreed with the draft word­ing, with 17% dis­agree­ing with it and the remainder say­ing ​“don’t know” or not respond­ing to this question.

2. Sug­ges­ted changes to the word­ing: 47 respond­ents answered the ques­tion ​“Do you pro­pose any changes to the word­ing as set out in the fire byelaw con­sulta­tion doc­u­ment?” but of those, only 24 (22%) actu­ally sug­ges­ted spe­cif­ic changes with oth­ers either respond­ing ​“No” or seek­ing cla­ri­fic­a­tion on ele­ments of the word­ing. Any sug­ges­tions made in the addi­tion­al writ­ten responses were also con­sidered at this stage. To aid the ana­lys­is, responses were grouped togeth­er under five themes: a) Defin­i­tions b) Incon­sist­ency or poten­tial ambi­gu­ity c) Nature of the offence d) Peri­od for which byelaw applies e) Enforcement

Each sug­ges­tion was then con­sidered in turn and, where deemed appro­pri­ate, accep­ted. A com­plete list of sug­ges­ted changes and the action relat­ing to each is giv­en in Annex 2.

1. Fur­ther com­ments on the pro­posed word­ing: 37 respond­ents (34%) made a com­ment in response to the ques­tion ​“Do you have any oth­er com­ments on the pro­posed byelaw?” with some mak­ing points that were rel­ev­ant to the draft word­ing and as such these were also included in the ana­lys­is. Some respond­ents took this oppor­tun­ity to indic­ate sup­port for, or oppos­i­tion to the prin­ciple of a byelaw and as with the earli­er con­sulta­tion com­ments reflec­ted very diverse views ran­ging from ​“long over­due” to ​“dra­coni­an”.

Revi­sion to the wording

1. Fol­low­ing con­sid­er­a­tion of the sug­ges­tions made in con­sulta­tion responses and in dis­cus­sion with Police Scot­land and with the advice of the Park Authority’s leg­al advisers the pro­posed word­ing of the byelaw has been revised and is attached as Annex 3.

Fur­ther Considerations

1. The writ­ten sub­mis­sions also included the sug­ges­tion that to address issues around using high fire risk peri­ods as part of the byelaw a risk assess­ment approach should

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Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Paper 1 Form­al Board 14 Feb­ru­ary 2025 Page 4 of 4

be used by landown­ers. The revised byelaw pro­posed in Annex 3 removes the high fire risk ele­ments of the byelaw and is simple to under­stand and imple­ment. Nev­er­the­less, a risk assess­ment approach for exemp­ted activ­it­ies that are under­taken or per­mit­ted by land or prop­erty own­ers remains a sens­ible approach for them. Rather than try­ing to deal with a com­plex and often site or area-spe­cif­ic and time-spe­cif­ic risk through a byelaw, officers are of the view that we can con­tin­ue our approach of sup­port­ing landown­ers in their approaches to assess­ing risk with advice and guidance.

1. Like many oth­er forms of legis­la­tion, the full leg­al word­ing of a byelaw is unlikely to be the most appro­pri­ate way of com­mu­nic­at­ing details of what it means with the pub­lic. The com­mu­nic­a­tions activ­ity referred to in sec­tion sev­en above will include the pro­duc­tion of plain Eng­lish guid­ance notes to accom­pany the leg­al word­ing and mes­saging to lead com­mu­nic­a­tions so that people under­stand the effect of the byelaw without requir­ing to read the leg­al word­ing in detail.

Colin Simpson 27 Janu­ary 2025 Colinsimpson@​cairngorms.​co.​uk