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261104 Paper 3 - Recreation Access and Infrastructure Report

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Cairngorms Loc­al Out­door Access Forum

Paper 3 – Recre­ation, access and infra­struc­ture update report

Adam Streeter-Smith, Recre­ation Access and Infra­struc­ture Man­ager 4 Novem­ber 2026

Pur­pose

This paper provides an update on the main areas of work both under­taken and planned. LOAF Mem­bers are invited to dis­cuss the items presented

1. Stat­utory Duties

Case­work

  • Most access cases since the last update have been locked gates, sev­er­al of which are already been investigated.
  • Only oth­er issue raised was a com­plaint about the long-term clos­ure of a Right of Way route. This is on Forestry & Land Scot­land land at Glen Doll and is due to wind­blow not being cleared after the dev­ast­at­ing storms 4 years ago. Cur­rently being assessed with input from Angus Coun­cil access officer (Note – the plan­ning author­ity remains the access author­ity for Rights of Ways).

Wild­fire closures

  • Dur­ing and in the after­math of the Glen­more and Aber­nethy wild­fires sec­tion 15 powers were util­ised to close areas of land and paths. The GIS / access team pro­duced online maps and posters based on part­ner landown­er inform­a­tion. As areas opened this was reviewed on a weekly basis. Clos­ures were in place for around 3 months.
  • Nation­al Access For­um likely to dis­cuss and pro­duce some stand­ard guid­ance regard­ing access clos­ures dur­ing / fol­low­ing wildfires.

2. Devel­op­ment and man­age­ment of core paths, paths and wider vis­it­or infrastructure

Spey­side Way

  • Sig­nage – new way­mark­ing sig­nage to be installed between Aviemore and Kin­craig to replace rot­ten posts, fol­low­ing com­ple­tion of an audit.

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Car­rbridge Path

  • The Access Team are work­ing with the Com­munity Coun­cil to sub­mit a plan­ning applic­a­tion for the pre­ferred route option.

Access­ible Paths

Fol­low­ing the pro­duc­tion of the toolkit, a grant fund was launched via the Cairngorms Trust.

  • Three applic­a­tions were received dur­ing the first round, two of which were fun­ded (upgrades to all-abil­it­ies paths at Nethy Bridge and Car­rbridge) both small amounts <£500.
  • Fund re-opened with mid-Octo­ber clos­ing date. Four applic­a­tions received, although some of these aren’t eligible.

Snow Roads Installations

  • Works have been com­pleted at Still to improve the steps into the struc­ture, cov­er­ing the gabi­on bas­kets with Caith­ness Slab
  • A tender has been let and bids received for works to upgrade the path to and around the Watch­ers, it is anti­cip­ated works will start in early November

Com­munity path day

A suc­cess­ful day was held in Kin­gussie with rep­res­ent­at­ives from 14 path groups. The morn­ing con­sisted of updates, net­work­ing and present­a­tions, fol­lowed by an after­noon of site vis­its. Well received and planned to become an annu­al event.

3. Man­aging for visitors

Path Pro­mo­tion

Path leaf­lets: New path maps being pro­duced for Nethy Bridge and Brae­mar. New Nethy leaf­let at draft stage.

Camper­vans

  • New page on web­site with camper­van inform­a­tion and inter­act­ive map of facil­it­ies — Cairngorms Nation­al Park | Camper­vans and motorhomes
  • New camper­van leaf­let in pro­gress – at final draft stage.

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Wild­life disturbance

Sev­er­al areas of ongo­ing work regard­ing work­ing to reduce recre­ation­al dis­turb­ance to wildlife:

  • Beavers – new sig­nage in pro­gress for sit­ing at beaver lodges, new inter­pret­a­tion pan­el planned for Lily Lochan (Rothiemurchus)
  • Caper­cail­lie – work in Deeside to map moun­tain bike trails and Caper areas, sim­il­ar work in Strath­spey to map caper areas for ori­enteer­ing groups
  • Slavo­ni­an grebes – poten­tial pro­ject at Loch Vaa to reduce recre­ation­al disturbance

4. Cairngorms Fire Man­age­ment Byelaw

Back­ground

While not dir­ectly part of stat­utory access duties the intro­duc­tion and imple­ment­a­tion of the new Cairngorms Fire Man­age­ment byelaw that was in place from 1 April to 30 Septem­ber 2026 has clear links with out­door access and the work of the Loc­al Out­door Access For­um. As such provid­ing a form­al update to the LOAF on the first year’s activ­ity is con­sidered appropriate.

Pre­par­at­ory activity

A num­ber of areas of pre­par­a­tion were required pri­or to the byelaw com­ing into force including:

  • Pro­duc­tion of an engage­ment and enforce­ment pro­ced­ure to guide how staff would imple­ment the byelaw.
  • Staff and part­ner ranger ser­vice training.
  • Pro­duc­tion and install­a­tion of both road and site based sig­nage alert­ing the pub­lic to the byelaw.
  • Com­mu­nic­a­tions activ­ity to alert the pub­lic to the byelaw which included:
    • Press releases and media interviews
    • Social media activity
    • Pro­duc­tion of assets for use in cam­paigns eg videos, screen graphics
    • Pro­duc­tion of assets for part­ner use – posters, table talk­ers, beer mats
  • Pro­vi­sion of advice to landown­ers on the implic­a­tions for their prop­er­ties and how and when exemp­tions might be used.

Engage­ment and Enforce­ment activity

In pre­par­a­tion for the incom­ing byelaw addi­tion­al fund­ing was alloc­ated to allow an increase in the num­ber of Park Author­ity rangers by approx­im­ately 2 full-time

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equi­val­ents for the sum­mer sea­son. This was how­ever split across 4 part-time posts to give more staff at week­ends when prob­lems more com­monly occur. With this addi­tion­al resource the ranger team car­ried out 1394 patrols between April and Septem­ber com­pared with 1117 in 2025.

Dur­ing these patrols rangers still came across a num­ber of fires and bar­be­cues but dur­ing the byelaw peri­od this num­ber totalled 34 com­pared to 98 in 2025, 191 in 2024 and 168 in 2023. Also encour­aging was the fact that vir­tu­ally all those engaged with this year agreed to put out their fire / bar­be­cue where­as in pre­vi­ous years a num­ber would refuse to do so assum­ing they still had the right to have a fire / barbecue.

While most people did respond pos­it­ively to this engage­ment, two cases were repor­ted to the Crown Office and Pro­cur­at­or Fisc­al Ser­vice for non-com­pli­ance, and it is now for the Pro­cur­at­or Fisc­al to decide wheth­er they wish to pro­ceed with these cases.