Loaf meeting notes 050325

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Cairngorms Loc­al Out­door Access For­um Minute of meet­ing 5 March 2025 (online) Present: Adam Streeter-Smith (AQSS) Nation­al Park Author­ity Ben Dol­phin (BD) LOAF Ben Oliv­er Jones (BOJ) LOAF Colin Cad­den (CC) LOAF Colin Simpson (CS) Nation­al Park Author­ity John Gri­er­son (JG) LOAF (Chair) Maree Mor­ris­on (MM) LOAF Mark John­ston (MJ) LOAF Patsy Richards (PR) LOAF Sarah Lawth­er (SL) Nation­al Park Author­ity Vicky Hilton (VH) Nation­al Park Authority

Apo­lo­gies: Tre­vor Thorn­ley Pete Wright

Wel­come and Minutes of last meet­ing on 13 Novem­ber 2024 Dis­cussed Action • JG — wel­comed group and gave apo­lo­gies. Minutes of the last meet­ing approved. Pre­vi­ous actions dis­charged with the excep­tion of seek­ing clar­ity on inclu­sion of fire­works vs pyro­tech­nics in the defin­i­tions, the defin­i­tion of a fire­place, and the addi­tion of the word­ing ​‘hot coals’. • CS — Intro­duced him­self to group and con­firmed that the mat­ter had been dis­cussed with law­yers, and they were happy with exist­ing word­ing. There were con­cerns that if spe­cif­ic examples were giv­en, it would prove to be an exhaust­ive list and vul­ner­able to loopholes.

Paper 1 — Respons­ible beha­viour mes­saging Dis­cussed Action • VH- Intro­duced paper and explained that it was focused on mes­saging that is used on signs regard­ing dogs and leads or dogs under close con­trol. Reminded group of the SOAC stand­ard mes­saging and the defin­i­tion of short lead, heel and close con­trol. Dis­cussed the dif­fer­ences in wildlife

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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• mes­saging in gen­er­al and those that relate to pro­tec­ted spe­cies, and oth­er wild­life that is still vul­ner­able des­pite not being iden­ti­fied as a pro­tec­ted spe­cies but do appear on the Red list. Reques­ted feed­back from group as best mes­saging mov­ing for­ward. • PR/VH- Dis­cussed the kind of area envis­aged for the sig­nage which would be for min­im­um area required for the shortest amount of time. Also dis­cussed how long the stay on path mes­saging might be used for which is poten­tially the breed­ing sea­son (1^st of April through to 31^st of July). • BOJ- Felt that ​‘keep dogs on lead’ sig­nage and remov­al of ​‘at heel’ mes­saging due to its ambi­gu­ity would be very help­ful, where­as ​‘stay on path’ mes­saging more dif­fi­cult where paths are undefined. • BD/VH- Dis­cussed size of spaces in areas such as the Cairngorms and the bal­ance between pro­tect­ing spe­cies whilst allow­ing people access. • PR/JG- Expressed sup­port of the paper and JG felt that ​‘dogs on lead’ was clear­er mes­saging than ​‘under close con­trol. • CC/VH- Dis­cussed how much notice would be provided with the sig­nage, the vari­ety of sig­nage styles and need for sig­nage to be put up and taken down at the begin­ning and end of the sea­son. • AQSS- Advised group that there is an area of work that’s being looked at with a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent part­ners look­ing at Dot­ter­el dis­turb­ance. The Caper pro­ject has shown that being able to provide very spe­cif­ic inform­a­tion at the right times is import­ant to enable people to make the right decision. • CS- Advised group that the Park Author­ity are tasked with ensur­ing that people com­ply with the access legis­la­tion, by apply­ing access legis­la­tion where pos­sible and required. • BD/VH- Dis­cussed vol­un­tary access agree­ments between the access author­ity, the landown­er, the loc­al com­munity and rel­ev­ant user groups in order to reach a decision.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 3 of 5 • PR- Felt that it would be use­ful to be pro­act­ive with Comms and likely Q&As in pre­par­a­tion for feed­back. • CC/VH/CS- Dis­cussed situ­ations where sig­nage is Park Author­ity branded or not, the risk that landown­ers would erect sig­nage inap­pro­pri­ately and that the tem­plate of the caper­cail­lie sig­nage would likely be used for dogs on leads or under close con­trol. • AQSS-Stated that ulti­mately the Park Author­ity want to provide landown­ers with the tools to allow them to effect­ively man­age vis­it­ors on their land. There would be dia­logue between the Park Author­ity and the landown­er based on an under­stand­ing that there is a degree of risk and likely evid­ence that there has been dis­turb­ance, due to its prox­im­ity to a par­tic­u­lar pop­u­lar route or sim­il­ar. • JG- Asked group if they agreed that there should be sig­nage stat­ing that dogs to be kept on leads and on paths for pro­tec­ted birds areas, and dogs on leads under close con­trol mes­sage for Red list spe­cies or a case-by-case assess­ment for issue areas to apply the dogs on leads only mes­sage. Group con­firmed agreement.

Paper 2- 2024/2025 Deliv­ery of sec­tion 10 and 13 stat­utory duties as con­ferred by the Land Reform (Scot­land) Act 2003 Dis­cussed Action • SL- Advised group that 24 access obstruc­tion cases have been repor­ted this year (to date), with 20 now closed and the remain­ing 4 open. This rep­res­ents a slight decrease on the pre­vi­ous year where there were 33 cases, com­pared to 28 cases in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃. The 24 access obstruc­tion cases con­sist­ing of 16 locked gates or bar­ri­ers, 2 with obstruct­ive sig­nage, and 2 with obstruct­ive beha­viour. There are sig­ni­fic­antly high­er num­ber of cases with­in Badenoch & Strath­spey com­pared to oth­er areas in the Nation­al Park.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 4 of 5 • VH- Shared a present­a­tion of Deshar Woods illus­trat­ing maps and gates and dis­cussed issues with one locked gates, an altern­at­ive unlocked entry point and some paths not appear­ing on all styles of map­ping. Reques­ted LOAF opin­ion on how many gates do you need to access a wood­land, and do they all have to be unlocked, and what is a reas­on­able level of access? Landown­er has giv­en reas­on for locked gate as being unau­thor­ised vehicle access although no evid­ence found for this. Group dis­cussed how long gate had been locked for and that locked gates can cre­ate unwel­come vis­it to the area as well as pre­vent less able vis­it­ors, e‑bike users or horse riders from access­ing paths. Cur­rently the locked gate can rep­res­ent a detour of approx­im­ately a third of total route. It was felt that default should be that gates remain unlocked unless there was a legit­im­ate reas­on for lock­ing it. In gen­er­al, the group agreed that it is unreas­on­able to expect vis­it­ors to use the altern­at­ive gate and it is a hindrance and an obstruc­tion to have that gate locked. • VH-Will go back to the landown­er and report that fol­low­ing this dis­cus­sion it has been con­cluded that the altern­at­ive is not accept­able and that the obstruc­tion should be removed or a altern­at­ive provided. VH • AQSS- Reques­ted feed­back from group regard­ing how group would like to be advised on case­work going for­ward. • BD- Appre­ci­ates cur­rent sys­tem of report­ing. • CC- Also likes the cur­rent sys­tem but felt emer­ging pat­terns would be use­ful. • AQSS- Thanked group for feed­back and con­firmed that he would provide an annu­al paper look­ing at the pre­vi­ous fin­an­cial year in terms of case­work stats, and on an ongo­ing basis, will provide some indi­vidu­al cases that are being worked on to get the groups input on. • JG- Stated that in pre­vi­ous years a lot of inform­a­tion was provided which has evolved into cur­rent sys­tem which he felt was bet­ter suited to the group’s needs. • CS- Thanked the group for their time and input which feeds into the wider organ­isa­tion per­spect­ive. • SL- Con­firmed that deer park issue pre­vi­ously described is for interest, rather than seek­ing advice from the group.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 5 of 5 Paper 3- Update and for­ward look • AQSS- Dis­cussed couple of cur­rent pro­jects; dir­ec­tion­al sig­nage work on the Spey­side Way, which has just fin­ished, and repla­cing some of the ram­bler gates between Crom­dale and the Park bound­ary. Past pro­jects that have recently been com­pleted include work on the river­side path at Dul­nain Bridge. There is also an update on the Fire Bylaw in the paper. • CS- Advised group that the draft fire bylaw will be sub­mit­ted to Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment next week with unknown times­cale of when they are likely to respond but sus­pect it could be in the sum­mer at the earli­est. • AQSS- Path works at Meall a’ Bhuchaille have been com­pleted. • CC- Men­tioned that the work car­ried out on the Spey­side Way towards Kin­craig sig­ni­fic­antly improved the path. • AQSS- Next sec­tion to be looked at is mid Kin­rara drive and dis­cus­sions with new landown­er planned.

AOB • JG/AQSS/BOJ- Dis­cussed rogue caper­cail­lie near Ryvoan that has been repor­ted as scar­ing vis­it­ors in the vicin­ity. RSPB have moved sig­nage cor­res­pond­ingly to advise visitors.

Date of next meet­ing • Wed­nes­day 4 June 2025. Hybrid meet­ing with oppor­tun­ity for site vis­it. Details TBC.

Meet­ing ended at 8:04pm