LOAF Casework Paper 2026 (ink saver)

Cairngorms Loc­al Out­door Access For­um Sarah Lawth­er and Vicky Hilton, Out­door Access Officers

2025/2026 Deliv­ery of sec­tion 10 and 13 stat­utory duties as con­ferred by the Land Reform (Scot­land) Act 2003

Pur­pose

This paper is presen­ted in order to update LOAF mem­bers on deliv­ery of the Park Author­it­ies stat­utory duties under the Land Reform (Scot­land) Act 2003.

Back­ground

Part one of the Land Reform (Scot­land) Act 2003 (“the LRA” or ​“the Act”) sets out the stat­utory duties, respons­ib­il­it­ies and powers of nation­al park author­it­ies in rela­tion to the pro­vi­sion and pro­mo­tion of the right of access. Under part one of the LRA the Park Author­ity has four spe­cif­ic duties including:

• Sec­tion 10: The Scot­tish Out­door Access Code (“SOAC” or the Code”)- There is a duty on the Park Author­ity, by sec­tion 10(7) (a) of the Act, to pub­li­cise the Code.
• Sec­tion 13: Duty to uphold access rights- Sec­tion 13(1) of the Act places a duty on the Park Author­ity to uphold access rights which entails assert­ing, pro­tect­ing, keep­ing open and free from obstruc­tion any route, water­way or oth­er means by which access may reas­on­ably be exercised.

Duty to pro­mote respons­ible beha­viour / SOAC

Pub­lic engagement

Dir­ect pub­lic engage­ment activ­it­ies pro­mot­ing respons­ible beha­viour and the Scot­tish Out­door Access Code (SOAC) are under­taken by Park Author­ity access officers and ranger staff. Details of this engage­ment are giv­en below for the peri­od Feb­ru­ary 2025 to Janu­ary 2026.

Activ­ity	No. of people	No. of ses­sions	Activ­it­ies
School groups	235	10	• Deliv­ery of SOAC edu­ca­tion pro­gramme in four high schools and three primary schools
Pub­lic events	28	1	• Ranger ​“pop-up” event (stall in car park on busy day)
CPD / Training	42	3	• SOAC train­ing ses­sions to Park Author­ity staff and volun­teer rangers.
Juni­or rangers	22	5	• Gen­er­al SOAC dur­ing sessions
Total num­ber of people dir­ectly engaged with	327

NB This describes form­al ded­ic­ated access activ­ity only, so does not include ranger patrolling and inform­al con­ver­sa­tions at oth­er com­munity events.

Pub­lic­a­tions

The Park Author­ity con­tin­ues to pro­mote the Code under the aus­pices of Tread Lightly in the Park, the list of pub­lic­a­tions / signs include:

• Main gen­er­al Tread Lightly leaflet
• Fire and barbe­que leaflet
• “High Fire Risk” mag­net­ic vehicle signs for all rangers’ vans and part­ner ranger ser­vice vehicles
• Respons­ible beha­viour poster signs – suite of 5 poster signs
• Wild­life dis­turb­ance sig­nage – for caper­cail­lie and waders – site spe­cif­ic map pan­els and dogs on leads signs, signs for Slavo­ni­an grebe breed­ing site
• Farm­ing signs – Dogs & live­stock, Dogs & lambs (2 versions)

Digit­al pro­mo­tion — Social media

Respons­ible beha­viour mes­sages were pro­moted on social media (Face­book and Ins­tagram) between March and Octo­ber on sub­jects such as respons­ible dog own­er­ship, wild­life dis­turb­ance, wild­fire aware­ness and mush­room for­aging. A total of 32 posts ran (58), which achieved 319,120 impres­sions (156,137), 550 com­ments (85) and 4,483 reac­tions (3,661). [2024 fig­ure in brackets].

Post num­bers are less than last year as more work was done in part­ner­ship with Vis­it­Cairngorms who delivered a lot of the vis­it­or man­age­ment cam­paign posts. As the tour­ism body, the social media fol­low­ers of Vis­it­Cairngorms con­sist of a high pro­por­tion of vis­it­ors to the Park, who are a key tar­get audi­ence for much of the respons­ible beha­viour messaging.

Duty to uphold access rights

Ana­lys­is of annu­al records

The cur­rent record shows a slight decrease in S14 case­work (obstruc­tions to access rights e.g. locked gates) for the review peri­od 1 April 2025 to begin­ning of Feb­ru­ary 2026. Records for the review peri­od com­pare as follows:

• ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ – 13 cases (5 live)
• ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ — 24 cases (2 live)
• ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ — 33 (0 live)
• 2022÷23− 28 cases (0 live)

Of the above 13 cases recor­ded in ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆, five are cur­rently live, mean­ing eight cases have been closed fol­low­ing invest­ig­a­tion and rel­ev­ant actions hav­ing been taken.

Break­down of cases by area and type

Of the 13 access obstruc­tion cases received 1 April 2025 to present date:

• 9 locked gates / barriers
• 2 obstruct­ive signage
• 1 obstruct­ive behaviour
• 1 oth­er access restriction

The num­ber of cases repor­ted are sig­ni­fic­antly high­er in Badenoch and Strath­spey com­pared to the oth­er areas with­in Nation­al Park.

Recent Not­able Cases

1. Case no. 2025-111: Far Ralia obstruc­ted forestry gate. A gate in a deer fence which had a stock fence placed across it as part of a new forestry plant­ing scheme fence was repor­ted to us as an obstruc­tion to access. A site vis­it revealed a new field gate 500m from the repor­ted gate, in our opin­ion the new gate was in a more appro­pri­ate loc­a­tion (near a foot­bridge, off a track) com­pared to the deer gate which was chal­len­ging to reach (across a broken board­walk and rough ground). We con­cluded that although the deer gate had been fenced over this wasn’t an obstruc­tion to access as; (a) the land man­ager had taken account of the needs of people seek­ing to exer­cise their access rights (b) as a new nearby gate was provided there was no delib­er­ate inten­tion to pre­vent or deter people from tak­ing access. We con­cluded that it was the case that the old gate had been super­seded by a dif­fer­ent nearby gate which was in a prefer­able loc­a­tion for access users.

2. Case no. 2025-016: ​‘Dogs on Leads’ signs con­trary to the guid­ance of the Scot­tish Out­door Access Code. This case will be presen­ted at the meet­ing, and the For­um will be asked to con­sider the issue of non-com­pli­ant signage.