Cairngorms Local Outdoor Access Forum meeting - paper 3: Update and forward look - 12 November 2025

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Cairngorms Loc­al Out­door Access Forum

Paper 3 — Update and for­ward look Pre­pared by: Adam Streeter-Smith, Recre­ation and Access Manager

Pur­pose This paper provides an update on the main areas of work both under­taken and planned.

1. Stat­utory Duties Core Paths Plan review • Inform­al con­sulta­tion com­plete – 208 responses received (see Paper 1). • Cur­rently work­ing through responses, assess­ing sug­ges­tions and pro­du­cing the draft Core Paths Plan. Aim to have draft Plan by Janu­ary, ahead of Feb­ru­ary LOAF meet­ing. • Prep work under­way regard­ing the assess­ments neces­sary on the draft Plan – Stra­tegic Envir­on­ment­al Assess­ment, Hab­it­ats Reg­u­la­tion Assess­ment and Equal­it­ies Impact Assess­ment. • Aim to have draft Plan signed off by March and put out to 12-week form­al con­sulta­tion around April 2026.

Pro­mo­tion of Scot­tish Out­door Access Code Dis­cus­sions and meet­ings around wild­life dis­turb­ance and plans made to stand­ard­ise Caper mes­saging sig­nage. New ​‘Lek it Be’ sig­nage being developed and Caper map signs to accom­pany recent signage.

Out­door Access Events Guid­ance Fol­low­ing dis­cus­sions at last LOAF meet­ing and feed­back from oth­er con­sul­tees, the events guid­ance has been updated with more emphas­is placed on impacts of events and con­sid­er­a­tion of envir­on­ment­al des­ig­na­tions and pro­tec­ted species.

1. Fire byelaw A Decision to invest­ig­ate the pos­sib­il­ity of a fire byelaw was first taken by the Park Author­ity Board in sum­mer 2023 and fol­low­ing a sig­ni­fic­ant pub­lic con­sulta­tion in early 2024 and a fur­ther con­sulta­tion on the word­ing in late 2024 a pro­pos­al for the byelaw

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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was sub­mit­ted to the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment in spring 2025. Scot­tish min­is­ters sub­sequently gave approv­al for the byelaw which will be intro­duced in 2026.

From 1 April to 30 Septem­ber every year, recre­ation­al fires and bar­be­cues will there­fore be banned in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park — a land­mark step for­ward in redu­cing the grow­ing risk of wild­fires in the face of cli­mate change but also a step that has implic­a­tions in terms of people’s right of respons­ible access as it over­rides the right to light fires where done respons­ibly that is incor­por­ated in the Scot­tish Out­door Access Code. The byelaw does how­ever con­tain some exemp­tions: • Land man­age­ment such as Muir­burn will not be included in the byelaw as this will be covered by new nation­al legis­la­tion and a licens­ing scheme. • The byelaw will not apply with­in the cur­til­age of dwell­ing houses (includ­ing those used as hol­i­day homes) and oth­er prop­er­ties such as hotels and camp­sites where fires or barbeques will be per­mit­ted. • Organ­ised groups such as scouts, bush­craft courses and events incor­por­at­ing fire will still be per­miss­ible as long as writ­ten landown­er per­mis­sion is given.

From a Park Author­ity per­spect­ive, work is now under way to devel­op a com­mu­nic­a­tions approach to mes­saging and sig­nage which will inform things such as site based and road signs, revised ​“Tread Lightly” and fire leaf­lets and com­mu­nic­a­tions activ­it­ies such as social media posts. A ses­sion was held with Loch Lomond & Trossachs Nation­al Park to learn more about enforce­ment and fur­ther work is under­way to devel­op a Cairngorms spe­cif­ic pro­cess for engage­ment and enforce­ment as well as build­ing rela­tion­ships with organ­isa­tions such as Police Scot­land and the Pro­cur­at­or Fiscal’s office.

While still a very use­ful tool, it is still acknow­ledged that a byelaw won’t elim­in­ate all fires, but the expect­a­tion is that it will help sig­ni­fic­antly reduce the num­ber of fires and with that in mind we pro­pose meas­ur­ing suc­cess through meas­ur­ing the num­ber of fires rather than the level of enforce­ment. Any enforce­ment will how­ever still be recor­ded and repor­ted on.

Pro­mo­tion of Fire Byelaw Comms cam­paign being developed by con­sult­ants ​“Bright Signals”

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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1. Devel­op­ment and Man­age­ment of core paths Spey­side Way Works to upgrade the sec­tion behind Insh to Inver­u­glass are cur­rently being car­ried out by ACT Her­it­age. This sec­tion suf­fers from poor drain­age and as a res­ult the path is extremely muddy espe­cially in the winter months, so this upgrade is wel­comed by the loc­al com­munity as well as long dis­tance users. If the weath­er stays settled, they estim­ate the works will be com­plete in 6 weeks and the path will remain open throughout.

Car­rbridge Path to School We are work­ing with Car­rbridge Com­munity Coun­cil to final­ise the last details on this path and once it has plan­ning per­mis­sion, we will be able to get it out to tender. The path will link the new hous­ing devel­op­ment on Carr Road along the edge of the field which ter­min­ates at the play­ing field. It will provide an off-road route to school for the chil­dren as well as a pleas­ant loc­al walk.

Glen Tanar Foot­bridge The bridge is cur­rently open, and tem­por­ary repairs have been car­ried out by Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil to pro­tect the abut­ments. Fur­ther hydro­lo­gic­al sur­veys are being under­taken to mod­el if the green engin­eer­ing options will work.

Path Pro­mo­tion Access­ible Paths — Three paths (in Nethy Bridge, Boat of Garten and Kin­gussie) have been sur­veyed against the access­ible path stand­ard. These will be pro­moted on the Access­ib­il­ity page of the Park web­site, and the indi­vidu­al path pages will provide more detailed inform­a­tion about the routes. This work will be rolled out to com­munity path groups and land man­agers with the aim of identi­fy­ing fur­ther access­ible routes and encour­aging bring­ing more paths up to access­ible standard.

Path leaf­lets – Ranger team has been trained in ​‘path grad­ing’ and the rangers have re- sur­veyed and graded all the paths in Tomin­toul, Nethy bridge, Bal­later and Brae­mar ahead of updat­ing the ​‘Paths around Com­munit­ies’ leaf­lets. This year aim­ing to update the Tomin­toul leaflet.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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1. Wider vis­it­or infra­struc­ture Vis­it­or Infra­struc­ture Improve­ment Pro­gramme Approx­im­ately £210,000 has been alloc­ated and grants offer from the VIIP funds held by The Park Author­ity. They include pro­jects such as paths works at Loch an Eilean and improve­ments to the Cairns on Bal­mor­al Estate.