Guidance note on the management of informal camping in the Cairngorms National Park

Guid­ance note on the man­age­ment of inform­al camp­ing in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park

Pur­pose of this guid­ance note

1. Wild camp­ing and inform­al camp­ing (as defined in annex I) is prac­tised through­out the Cairngorms Nation­al Park giv­ing great pleas­ure to a con­sid­er­able num­ber of people. The vast major­ity of people camp in a respons­ible fash­ion and cause few problems.

2. The CNPA recog­nises that for some land man­agers, both private and pub­lic, inform­al camp­ing can be a nuis­ance and devel­op into a per­sist­ent prob­lem. Issues asso­ci­ated with inform­al camp­ing do occur from time to time through­out the Park, com­monly close to roads and water, but on the whole they are well man­aged by the land man­agers espe­cially with the act­ive sup­port of rangers.

3. This guid­ance note sets out the respect­ive roles of land mangers and the CNPA in man­aging inform­al camp­ing issues when they occur and sets out the mech­an­isms to address them in the longer term. It sets out the respect­ive roles of those engaged in tack­ling issues asso­ci­ated with inform­al camp­ing and the mon­it­or­ing required by the CNPA to jus­ti­fy man­age­ment inter­ven­tions at any giv­en site.

Frame­work for the guid­ance note

1. The frame­work for this guid­ance note is the Nation­al Access For­um – Man­aging inform­al camp­ing guid­ance for land and recre­ation man­agers. This NAF guid­ance is inten­ded for those man­aging issues relat­ing to inform­al camp­ing, par­tic­u­larly in road­side set­tings. It sets out both the legis­lat­ive frame­work and spe­cifies when dif­fer­ent types of beha­viour are either crim­in­al or irre­spons­ible; this can be found in annex 2.

Address­ing prob­lems when they occur

What to do if a land man­ager encoun­ters irre­spons­ible behaviour

1. It is the role of the land man­ager or ranger to take a sens­ible course of action if they encounter beha­viour that con­flicts with the Scot­tish Out­door Access Code (the Code) but is not a crim­in­al offense. A sens­ible course of action is to talk in a friendly way to the people involved and ask them to modi­fy their beha­viour. People will modi­fy their beha­viour if they under­stand the reas­ons for doing so, explain­ing if neces­sary that their actions are out­with of access rights. If they refuse to do so, they could be asked to leave.

2. Either party may seek advice on the extent of access rights from the Access Author­ity (CNPA) and the Loc­al Out­door Access Forum.

3. If the person’s beha­viour is threat­en­ing then the land manger or ranger should con­tact the police.

What to do if a land man­ager encoun­ters crim­in­al behaviour

1. If a land man­ager or ranger encoun­ters crim­in­al beha­viour, or is con­cerned that beha­viour may lead to a crim­in­al offense, then they should con­tact the police immediately.

Address­ing prob­lems in the longer term

1. At a nation­al level Scot­tish Nat­ur­al Her­it­age, as the lead agency on the pro­mo­tion and under­stand­ing of the Code pro­motes the key mes­sages relat­ing to camp­ing (see https://www.outdooraccess- scotland.scot/practical-guide-all/camping). The fol­low­ing key mes­sages for campers are par­tic­u­larly rel­ev­ant to inform­al camping:

   • Take all lit­ter home:
   • Avoid over­crowding by mov­ing on to anoth­er location;
   • Carry a trow­el to bury your human waste and urin­ate well away from water;
   • Use a stove or leave no trace of any camp­fire. Nev­er cut down or dam­age trees;
   • If in doubt ask the land own­er for advice o where to camp and;
   • Access rights are not an excuse for anti-social or crim­in­al behaviour.

2. It is the role of the CNPA to ensure that at a Park wide level there is an aware­ness, through pro­mo­tion, of the key mes­sages form the code that relate to camp­ing. The CNPA’s Code cam­paign will be tar­geted around a ​“tread lightly” mes­sage and includes advice on where and how to camp, fires, cook­ing and toileting.

3. It is the role of the land man­ager or ranger at the site to provide the face to face con­tact inform­ing the pub­lic on how they should behave, to provide appro­pri­ate sig­nage instruct­ing the pub­lic on how to behave and sug­gest­ing altern­at­ive loc­a­tions. The CNPA will assist land man­agers and rangers with this role by provid­ing resources and train­ing where there is a need.

4. Under some cir­cum­stances, one of the above approaches may be suf­fi­cient enough to pre­vent inform­al camp­ing from becom­ing a prob­lem. In most situ­ations a com­bin­a­tion of approaches is going to be the most effect­ive way of man­aging inform­al camping.

5. If after all these meas­ures the impact of inform­al camp­ing is still an issue then he CNPA will assist land man­agers and rangers to devel­op appro­pri­ate vis­it­or man­age­ment plans for tack­ling these issues.

6. With the devel­op­ment of any vis­it­or man­age­ment plan the CNPA would expect some form of mon­it­or­ing to be under­taken to estab­lish if trends in camp­ing activ­ity change as a res­ult of imple­ment­ing new meas­ures. The CNPA will assist in this pro­cess by set­ting out the require­ments for mon­it­or­ing (see annex 3)

For fur­ther inform­a­tion con­tact The Out­door Access Team, The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity, 14 The Square, Grant­own-on-Spey, Moray­shire, PH26 3HG or email outdooraccess@​cairngorms.​co.​uk

Annex I Defin­i­tion of inform­al camping

Inform­al camp­ing is most;	Likely not to be
Likely to be
Light­weight; | Close to pub­lic roads and car parks;
Away from pub­lic roads or car parks; | Close to facil­it­ies such as shops, toi­lets, vis­it­or attractions;
Only stay­ing for one or two nights; | Lar­ger tents sleep­ing 4 adults and upwards;
In quite secluded spots; | Groups of tents;
Only one or two tents and; | Per­man­ent in nature with items such as chairs, bar­be­cues, wash­ing lines and stor­age areas;
Access­ible only by foot, bike or canoe. | Be used by fish­er­men and;
	* Involve large fires.

Annex 2: When are dif­fer­ent types of beha­vi­or irre­spons­ible or criminal?

Note: The offences lis­ted are for guid­ance only and do not con­sti­tute a com­plete or defin­it­ive inter­pret­a­tion of the law.

Issue	Respons­ible and irre­spons­ible beha­viour What the Code says…	Crim­in­al offences
Dis­turb­ing oth­er people	Access rights do not extend to ​“a house, cara­van, tent or oth­er place afford­ing a per­son pri­vacy or shel­ter”, or to ​“suf­fi­cient adja­cent land to enable those liv­ing there to have reas­on­able meas­ures of pri­vacy and to ensure that their enjoy­ment of that house or place is not unreas­on­ably disturbed”.
Houses and gardens
“when close to a house or garden, you can respect people’s pri­vacy and peace of mind by…keeping a sens­ible dis­tance from the house…not linger­ing or act­ing in ways which might annoy or alarm people liv­ing in the house; and keep­ing noise to a min­im­um” (page 25)
Access at night
“If you are out at night, take extra care to respect people’s pri­vacy and peace of mind” (page 26)
Wild camp­ing
”..help to avoid caus­ing prob­lems for loc­al people and land man­agers by….keeping well away from build­ings… If you wish to camp close to a house or build­ing, seek the owner’s per­mis­sion.” (page 115)	Com­mon law — breach of the peace
Occurs when one or more per­sons con­duct them­selves in a riot­ous or dis­orderly man­ner any­where, which alarms, annoys or dis­turbs oth­er people.
To prove a breach of the peace the most import­ant thing is to prove that someone was alarmed, annoyed or disturbed.
*fixed pen­alty offence
Civic Gov­ern­ment (Scot­land) Act 1982 (Sec­tion 54)
Per­sist­ing, to the reas­on­able annoy­ance of oth­ers, in play­ing music­al instru­ments, singing, play­ing radi­os etc, and not desist­ing on being required to do so by a con­stable in uni­form, is an offence.
*fixed pen­alty offence
Dam­aging prop­erty and/​or the environment	Care for your envir­on­ment (nat­ur­al her­it­age): ​“You can do this by not inten­tion­ally or reck­lessly dis­turb­ing or des­troy­ing plants, birds and oth­er anim­als, or geo­lo­gic­al fea­tures”. (Page 18)
“You must not inten­tion­ally dis­turb spe­cially pro­tec­ted birds while nest­ing, or their young, and you must not inten­tion­ally uproot any wild plant. In a small num­ber of areas and for very spe­cif­ic reas­ons, such as to pro­tect a rare plant or bird, you might be asked to avoid a spe­cif­ic area or not to exer­cise your access rights.” (page 38)
Care for your envir­on­ment (cul­tur­al heritage):
“…treat (cul­tur­al her­it­age) sites care­fully and leave them as you find them by: not mov­ing, dis­turb­ing, dam­aging or defa­cing any stones, walls, struc­tures or oth­er features…not dig­ging or oth­er­wise dis­turb­ing the ground surface…not tak­ing any­thing away, includ­ing loose stones…” (page 41)
“do not camp (or) light fires…on any cul­tur­al her­it­age site” (page 42)
Cul­tur­al her­it­age sites are defined broadly to include a wide range of monu­ments or archae­olo­gic­al sites which may or may not be man­aged as such.	Wild­life & Coun­tryside Act 1981
Part I makes it an offence to inten­tion­ally or reck­lessly kill or injure any wild bird (sub­ject to cer­tain exclu­sions) and cer­tain wild anim­als, or pick or uproot wild plants without per­mis­sion. It is also an offence to des­troy a bird’s nest or its eggs or to obstruct a bird from using its nest. Sim­il­arly it is an offence to dam­age or des­troy a place used by cer­tain wild anim­als for shel­ter or to dis­turb such an anim­al whilst it is using a place of shelter.
The Con­ser­va­tion (Nat­ur­al Hab­it­ats &c.) Reg­u­la­tions 1994
Reg­u­la­tion 43 — It is an offence to pick, col­lect, cut, uproot or des­troy any wild plant of a European pro­tec­ted species.
Reg­u­la­tion 39 – It is an offence to delib­er­ately or reck­lessly cap­ture, injure or kill a wild anim­al of a European pro­tec­ted spe­cies, or to har­ass such an anim­al or to dis­turb it while it is rear­ing young, occupy­ing its place of shel­ter or in such a way that might impair its abil­ity to sur­vive. It is also an offence to take or des­troy the eggs of such an anim­al or to dam­age or des­troy its breed­ing site or place of rest.
European pro­tec­ted spe­cies occur­ring in Scot­land include otter and bats.
Nature Con­ser­va­tion (Scot­land) Act 2004 (sec­tion 19)
It is an offence to inten­tion­ally or reck­lessly dam­age any nat­ur­al fea­ture spe­cified in an SSSI notification.
Crim­in­al Law (Con­sol­id­a­tion) (Scot­land) Act 1995, (sec­tion 52)
Van­dal­ism – Any per­son who, without reas­on­able excuse, wil­fully or reck­lessly des­troys or dam­ages any prop­erty belong­ing to anoth­er, shall be guilty of the offence of vandalism
*fixed pen­alty offence
Com­mon law – mali­cious mischief
Con­sists in the wil­ful, wan­ton, and mali­cious destruc­tion of, or dam­age to, the prop­erty of anoth­er per­son. There must be malice involved, rather than acci­dent­al dam­age, and examples may include injur­ing grow­ing trees, maim­ing anim­als, or run­ning to waste any liquid or sub­stance. A dif­fer­ence from van­dal­ism is that for van­dal­ism there must be dam­age to actu­al prop­erty, where­as with mali­cious mis­chief fin­an­cial dam­age arising from a crim­in­al act is suf­fi­cient. This offence may be cited, rather than van­dal­ism, if the value of dam­age is high.
*fixed pen­alty offence
Fires	The light­ing of a fire is allowed as part of the exer­cise of access rights, if it is done responsibly.
Light­ing Fires: ​“Wherever pos­sible, use a stove rather than light an open fire. If you do wish to light an open fire, keep it small, under con­trol and super­vised – fires that get out of con­trol can cause major dam­age, for which you might be liable. Nev­er light an open fire dur­ing pro­longed dry peri­ods or in areas such as forests, woods, farm­land, or on peaty ground or near to build­ings or in cul­tur­al her­it­age sites where dam­age can be eas­ily caused. Heed all advice at times of high risk. Remove all traces of an open fire before you leave”.
(Page 102)
On the inter-tid­al fore­shore, there are also com­mon law rights for pub­lic recre­ation­al use which con­tin­ue to exist, and these rights include light­ing a fire. The fore­shore is the land between the upper and lower ordin­ary spring tides.
(Page 16)	There con­tin­ue to be leg­al offences con­trolling the light­ing of fires in cer­tain situations:
Civic Gov­ern­ment (Scot­land) Act 1982 (Sec­tion 56) — ​“Any per­son who lays or lights a fire in a pub­lic place so as to endanger any oth­er per­son or give him reas­on­able cause for alarm or annoy­ance, or so as to endanger any prop­erty, shall be guilty of an offence, and liable on sum­mary con­vic­tion to pay a fine.” It may be taken that access rights have exten­ded the ​‘pub­lic place’ pro­vi­sion so it now applies to most land. This offence could apply quite widely, and is par­tic­u­larly import­ant if people or prop­erty are put in danger. The words ​“reas­on­able cause for alarm or annoy­ance” are import­ant, since just because someone says they are annoyed does not always mean that an offence has been com­mit­ted. There has to be a ​‘reas­on­able’ basis, with a sig­ni­fic­ant like­li­hood of danger or pub­lic nuisance.
Roads (Scot­land) Act 1984 (s. 100) – ​“a per­son who,.. by light­ing a fire within..30 metres of a road, dam­ages the road or endangers traffic on it” com­mits an offence under this Act.
Human waste	Human waste: If you need to urin­ate, do so at least 30m from open water or rivers and streams. If you need to defec­ate, do so as far away as pos­sible from build­ings, from open water or rivers and streams and from any farm anim­als. Bury fae­ces in a shal­low hole and replace the turf.
(page 102)	Con­trol of Pol­lu­tion Act 1974 (as amended) (s.31) -
* If you cause or know­ingly per­mit to enter sur­face or ground water
* any pois­on­ous, nox­ious or pol­lut­ing mat­ter, or
* any sol­id waste matter,
you are com­mit­ting an offence.
Civic Gov­ern­ment (Scot­land) Act 1982 (Sec­tion 47)
Any per­son who urin­ates or defec­ates in such cir­cum­stances as to cause, or be likely to cause, annoy­ance to any oth­er per­son shall be guilty of an offence, and liable on sum­mary con­vic­tion to a fine.
*fixed pen­alty offence
Lit­ter	Lit­ter: Take away all your lit­ter. Take par­tic­u­lar care not to drop things like bottles, cans or plastic bags as these can dam­age machinery and if eaten by a farm anim­al or a wild anim­al they can cause severe injury or death. Do not leave any food scraps or asso­ci­ated pack­aging as these might be eaten by anim­als and help to spread diseases.
(page 103)	Envir­on­ment­al Pro­tec­tion Act 1990 (Sec­tion 87)
It is an offence to drop or depos­it and leave lit­ter in any pub­lic open place (a place in the open air where you can go without paying).
Live­stock	Wild Camp­ing: Help to avoid caus­ing prob­lems for loc­al people and land man­agers by not camp­ing in enclosed fields of crops or farm animals.
(page 115)
Pic­nick­ing: For your own health, avoid pic­nick­ing in fields where there are farm anim­als (or may have been recently) or where the farm­er has indic­ated that the field has recently been sprayed with lime or slurry. Do not feed farm anim­als and take all lit­ter, includ­ing any food scraps, away with you. (page 108)	Dogs (Pro­tec­tion of Live­stock) Act 1953 (Sec­tion 1)
If a dog wor­ries live­stock on any agri­cul­tur­al land the per­son in charge of the dog is guilty of an offence. Wor­ry­ing includes a dog attack­ing or chas­ing live­stock, or being loose in a field where there are sheep.
Dogs	Dogs: vari­ous rel­ev­ant guid­ance, including
nev­er let your dog worry or attack livestock
do not let your dog into fields where there are lambs, calves or oth­er young animals.
(page 84,85)
Vari­ous guid­ance, including
in recre­ation areas and oth­er pub­lic places avoid caus­ing con­cern to oth­ers by keep­ing your dog
under close con­trol or on a short lead (page 85)
dog fae­ces can carry dis­eases that can affect humans, farm anim­als and wild­life. The highest risks are in fields of cattle, sheep and oth­er anim­als, in fields where fruit and veget­ables are grow­ing, and in pub­lic open places… If your dog defec­ates in these sorts of places, pick up and remove the fae­ces and take them away with you. (page 45)	Dogs (Pro­tec­tion of Live­stock) Act 1987 (Sec­tion 4)
This Act provides a defence for people who kill or injure a dog which is wor­ry­ing livestock.

Dog Foul­ing (Scot­land) Act 2003 (Sec­tion 1) A per­son com­mits an offence under this law if they do not imme­di­ately remove the fae­ces defec­ated by their dog in any pub­lic open place. Under the defin­i­tion adop­ted by this Act, this does not extend to farm­land. | | Pick­ing or collecting/​tak­ing away | Pick­ing wild ber­ries and mush­rooms: Cus­tom­ary pick­ing of wild fungi and ber­ries for your own con­sump­tion is not affected by the legis­la­tion. Care for the envir­on­ment by fol­low­ing any agreed guid­ance on this activ­ity. How­ever, being on or cross­ing land or water for the pur­pose of tak­ing away, for com­mer­cial pur­poses or for profit, any­thing in or on the land or water is excluded from access rights. (Page 108) Col­lect­ing wood for a fire could be con­sidered cus­tom­ary too if for per­son­al use but oth­er­wise it might be con­sidered as theft. See advice on Dam­age to hab­it­ats or spe­cies. | Wild­life and Coun­tryside Act 1981 It is an offence under the Wild­life and Coun­tryside Act 1981 to uproot mush­rooms, but not to pick them.

Pick­ing mush­rooms and col­lect­ing fire­wood on a large or com­mer­cial scale might be regarded as theft under Scots Law, although it is unclear wheth­er a pro­sec­u­tion would be likely to res­ult in prac­tice. | | Motor Vehicles and park­ing | Car park­ing: When you park your vehicle it is import­ant not to cause any dam­age or cre­ate an obstruc­tion by:

• not block­ing an entrance to a field or building;
• not mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for oth­er people to use a road or track;
• hav­ing regard for the safety of others;
• try­ing not to dam­age the verge; and
• using a car park if one is nearby. (page 76) | Road Traffic Act 1988 (Sec­tion 34 and 22) ​“It is an offence to drive a motor vehicle without law­ful author­ity on:
• land of any descrip­tion (not form­ing part of a road), or
• a foot­path or bri­dle­way except in an emer­gency.” Sec­tion 34 makes an allow­ance for a motor vehicle to be driv­en off-road for no more than 15 yards solely in order to park the vehicle. How­ever, it spe­cific­ally notes that this excep­tion does not con­fer any right to park the vehicle on the land, and cla­ri­fies that this may con­sti­tute tres­pass if done without law­ful author­ity. Sec­tion 22 makes it an offence to park or leave a vehicle or its trail­er in a pos­i­tion likely to cause danger to oth­er road-users. |

Annex 3 – Mon­it­or­ing inform­al camp­ing at hot­spot sites

Pur­pose

1. The pur­pose of this mon­it­or­ing frame­work is to build up a pic­ture of inform­al camp­ing activ­ity at a defined camp­ing hot­spot to estab­lish: a. Impacts to the nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al her­it­age of the Nation­al Park; b. Impacts to the land or any­thing in, on or under it and; c. Impacts on pub­lic enjoy­ment of, and safety in, the Nation­al Park.

2. It is not about estab­lish­ing trends in ​“wild camp­ing” which is defined as light­weight for one or two nights and away from roads, because this routinely occurs without any issues. This mon­it­or­ing is focused on sites where inform­al camp­ing under access rights occur and the issues have become acute.

3. The mon­it­or­ing of inform­al camp­ing activ­ity will allow the CNPA and part­ners to estab­lish if vis­it­or man­age­ment meas­ures put in place are work­ing and will build up an evid­ence base to jus­ti­fy or oth­er­wise the use of bylaws or man­age­ment rules.

Key inform­a­tion to be collected

1. Land man­agers and rangers know their area intim­ately and will already gath­er inform­a­tion on incid­ents of inform­al camp­ing. To make the case for the use of bylaws at any giv­en site the fol­low­ing inform­a­tion should be col­lec­ted: i. Num­bers of tents and cars at each inden­ti­fied site; ii. Dam­age to the nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al her­it­age of the site; iii. Incid­ents requir­ing police involvement.

A mon­it­or­ing framework

1. To imple­ment the mon­it­or­ing frame­work the CNPA will agree with the land manger the extent of the zone or zones where inform­al camp­ing activ­ity will be mon­itored. These zones will be mapped out in GIS and could mir­ror Estate bound­ar­ies, des­ig­na­tion bound­ar­ies or the area covered by the vis­it­or man­age­ment plan.

2. The CNPA will assist land man­agers with the data col­lec­tion at hot­spot sites by provid­ing a pro-forma mon­it­or­ing form in the form of an excel spread­sheet. It will include the fol­low­ing fields: a. Date; b. Loc­a­tion; C. Num­ber of cars; d. Num­ber of tents; e. Descrip­tion of incid­ent; f. Issue; i. Fire; ii. Dam­age to nat­ur­al her­it­age fea­tures; iii. Dam­age to cul­tur­al fea­tures; iv. Impact on oth­er users enjoy­ment; g. Repor­ted to the police and; h. Action taken.

3. Land man­agers are already mon­it­or­ing use at these hot­spots so if they choose not to adopt the pro-forma mon­it­or­ing form then they can adapt their own to include the above information.

What will we do with the information?

1. The CNPA will col­late the inform­a­tion gathered by land man­agers on an annu­al basis and use it to illus­trate year on year trends in inform­al camp­ing activ­ity. This will enable the CNPA to pro­act­ively make resources avail­able pri­or to the next camp­ing sea­son to imple­ment vis­it­or man­age­ment plans.

2. The Police may use the inform­a­tion in ​“prob­lem pro­fil­ing” to dir­ect police resources in crime prevention.

How will this inform­a­tion be presented?

1. It is pro­posed that inform­a­tion will be presen­ted in a tab­u­lar format with accom­pa­ny­ing maps in an annu­al report. The report will also detail oth­er inform­a­tion to illus­trate if there are any emer­gent sites close by