Meeting Notes

CAIRNGORMS LOC­AL OUT­DOOR ACCESS FORUM

Wed­nes­day 9^th March from 6.30pm – 8.00pm CNPA Lifes­ize meet­ing room

https://​call​.lifes​ize​cloud​.com/​9​88805.

Who	Rep­res­ent­ing
Adam Streeter-Smith	CNPA
Alisa Vil­le­g­as	LOAF
Car­o­lyn Robertson	CNPA
Doug Stew­art	CNPA
Edward Humphrey	Din­net & Kinord Estate — Landowner
Eilidh Scob­bie	LOAF
Elean­or Mackintosh	CNPA Board
Gav­in Clark	NatureScot
Huw Oliv­er	Badenoch & Strath­spey Trail Association
Jenny Allen	CNPA (minutes)
John Gri­er­son	LOAF — Chair
Jonath­an Kitchinger	Scot­tish Canoe Association
Mark John­ston	Crown Estate Scotland
Neil Wilson	LOAF
Pete Crane	CNPA
Pete Wright	LOAF
Tre­vor Thornley	LOAF
Vicky Hilton	CNPA

Item	Action
Wel­come and Minutes of last meet­ing on 10th Novem­ber 2021
JG wel­comed all to the meeting.
Mat­ters arising from Minutes
Meet­ing note agreed. JA noted two cor­rec­tions to the organ­isa­tions represented.
Pre­vi­ous Actions
• JG will sub­mit a report to say that LOAF is sup­port­ive of the Nation­al Park plan. Complete
• GC will report back about the Loch Kinord plan to next meet­ing. Later in Agenda
• JG will write to Net­work Rail and Trans­port Scot­land about the Dal­whin­nie Rail Cross­ing, copy­ing in CNPA, Kate For­bes and High­land Coun­cil. Com­pleted, JG noted that there had not been a reply. AS‑S repor­ted on a fur­ther meet­ing with Net­work Rail (NR) & vari­ous oth­er parties. NR is adam­ant that the cross­ing can’t be opened, and are look­ing at addi­tion­al secur­ity fen­cing. There is con­tin­ued pres­sure on NR and AS‑S hopes to report fur­ther at the next LOAF meeting.	AS‑S will chase up for a response
Loch Kinord Access Plan
GC — In June 2021 the pub­lic were asked not to go on the water to the end of breed­ing sea­son. In Novem­ber this was reviewed and stake­hold­ers were con­sul­ted. 28 individuals/​organisations were approached, 19 responses were received and 20 people atten­ded a fol­low up meet­ing. After tak­ing on board the views NatureScot have decided to oper­ate with same guidelines as last year. Out­with breed­ing sea­son there have been signs up ask­ing water users to stay away from sens­it­ive shorelines.
EH out­lined his pos­i­tion as the Landown­er. He broadly wel­comes approach, and noted that he has sup­por­ted the new car park­ing so the estate is act­ively wel­com­ing visitors.
Treat­ing swim­mers as a sep­ar­ate group from oth­er water users was dis­cussed. Swim­mers can have a good exper­i­ence in a much smal­ler area that oth­er water users would find restrict­ive. How­ever it was also felt that for mes­saging the sim­pler the bet­ter, and oth­er water users might see the swim­mers and not real­ise the distinction.
The zones in which wild swim­mers were asked to stay was also dis­cussed. The sug­ges­ted areas need fur­ther con­sulta­tion; Castle Island is cur­rently a sched­uled site and a bird breed­ing ground, but swim­mers cur­rently go there. Scot­tish Swim­ming were included in the dis­cus­sions in Novem­ber but they haven’t seen the sug­ges­ted zones.
There was a brief dis­cus­sion about per­mits but these would require the intro­duc­tion of loc­al bylaws.
JK said the Scot­tish Canoe Asso­ci­ation was dis­ap­poin­ted in out­come but also that they under­stand the think­ing behind the proposals.
TT raised the lack of data around the effect of wild swim­mers on breed­ing birds. GC said the inten­tion was for staff on the ground to observe num­ber of swim­mers and signs of dis­turb­ance to gath­er inform­a­tion for future decisions.
It was agreed to take an approach where swim­ming is not dis­cour­aged, and also noted that nation­al guid­ance will be com­ing out which will impact how to take this issue forward.
JG asked GC come back at the end of the year with an update.
GC, EH & JK left meeting
Moun­tain Bik­ing Recre­ation Man­age­ment Plan for Badenoch and Strathspey
CR gave some back­ground. The Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject was set up to work with com­munit­ies in the Nation­al Park, includ­ing the moun­tain bike community.
About 20 moun­tain bike riders came togeth­er and agreed to work to reduce trail erosion and dis­turb­ance to wild­life. The group set out actions includ­ing the Moun­tain Bik­ing Recre­ation Man­age­ment Plan. An intern mapped all the bike trails, com­pared it to the Caper­cail­lie data, and iden­ti­fied areas of con­flict. The plan aims to pro­mote respons­ible rid­ing, but not to restrict access.
HO is a mem­ber of the group. He noted that the Man­age­ment Plan reflects many things that riders want to do any way, and the sup­port of CNPA and Bik­ing Scot­land have allowed them to hap­pen more stra­tegic­ally and sus­tain­ably. This will bene­fit the rid­ing community.
There was dis­cus­sion about how oth­er user groups would be impacted – would there be more trails with mul­tiple dif­fer­ent users on them. It was gen­er­ally felt that dif­fer­ent users already used the trails without con­flict, but it could be an oppor­tun­ity to edu­cate gen­er­al mem­bers of pub­lic as well, and to high­light the need to be mind­ful of oth­er users. If con­flict were to hap­pen it would be in a par­tic­u­lar area and could be man­aged with­in a site spe­cif­ic man­age­ment plan.
The dis­cus­sion also covered how to get the mes­saging passed from moun­tain bikers to oth­er user groups (eg dog walk­ers, run­ners). The fact that many riders did oth­er activ­it­ies would be a way to spread the mes­sage, and that passing the mes­sage and influ­en­cing oth­er users in this way would be more effect­ive than a ​‘top down’ approach.
AV offered the Green Health net­work – par­tic­u­larly when reach­ing out to new users as an oppor­tun­ity to share mes­saging through these groups.
HO left meeting
Man­aging for Vis­it­ors in 2022
AS‑S gave an out­line. The plan is try­ing to con­sol­id­ate the learn­ing from the last 2 years into one doc­u­ment about how to man­age areas for vis­it­ors. Going for­ward it will feed into the Access Strategy and the Comms mes­saging. There have been chal­lenges around mon­it­or­ing and eval­u­ation, so the paper sets out how this will hap­pen to be more consistent.
PC gave an update. Ini­tially the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment had reduced fund­ing for rangers, but this has been amended. The CNPA is now appointing		rangers, RSPB and NTS are also be recruit­ing. ​“Tread Lightly’ has been in use for more than a dec­ade; Vis­it Scot­land is using from this year. There have been a lot of improve­ment in vis­it­or infra­struc­ture over recent months.
CR left meeting
Update on case­work volumes and types over 2019 – 2021 cal­en­dar years.
DS intro­duced the paper. It fol­lows on from pre­vi­ous updates, and shows the con­tinu­ing upward trend in case­work since 2019; this increase squeezes oth­er work that can be done. Some of the increase might be due to Cov­id, so a clear­er pic­ture will emerge as data is col­lec­ted over the next few years.
DS com­men­ted that it was encour­aging that most cases are not sig­ni­fic­antly dif­fi­cult, but out­lined two recent not­able cases:
• Case 660 occurred when FLS closed core paths for forestry har­vest­ing, but the loc­al com­munity were not made aware. The situ­ation turned into a form­al com­plaint to FLS; the mis­take was accep­ted and les­sons learnt.
• Case 732 was over cattle in Glen Ban­chor obstruct­ing access to a foot­path. Advice was giv­en to farm­er to improve sig­nage and bet­ter meth­od­o­logy. How­ever the cattle then moved to where they were block­ing a pub­lic road and the case was passed High­land Coun­cil under the Roads Scot­land Act.
Review of For­um mem­ber­ship and Stand­ing Orders
AS‑S had raised the issue at the pre­vi­ous meet­ing. The paper recog­nises the cir­cum­stances of last 2 years, acknow­ledges the need to sup­port con­tinu­ity in the LOAF, and also the need to increase mem­ber­ship. A sig­ni­fic­ant piece of work is com­ing up in review­ing Act­ive Cairngorms strategy
The mem­bers agreed that two online meet­ings and one face to face meet­ing was a good struc­ture: it was bene­fi­cial to not ask people to travel on winter even­ings, and there was a hope that that might increase the num­ber of rep­res­ent­at­ives from the south side of the NP. It was sug­ges­ted that the face to face meet­ing might involve a meal and a site vis­it to allow for networking.
AV asked if there was a plan on how to reach out to new mem­bers. AS‑S will send an email to the cur­rent mem­bers to map their interests and back­grounds, and identi­fy gaps in exper­i­ence, skills and rep­res­ent­a­tion. He will then ask mem­bers to sug­gest aven­ues of people to approach.	AS‑S
JG checked that mem­bers were happy with plan, and there was gen­er­al agreement.
AOCB
JG noted that PC was retir­ing, and thanked him for his pos­it­ive atti­tude, guid­ance and ded­ic­a­tion in his work. On behalf of the LOAF he wished PC a happy and healthy retirement.
JG thanked every­one who came.
Next Meet­ing