NAF Update - 29 May 2019 (A2971053)

Nation­al Access For­um Update – May 2019

Sum­mary of main top­ics — Nation­al Access For­um meet­ing 29 May 2019

Review of IPA — Scot­tish Nat­ur­al Her­it­age (SNH) informed the For­um about a review of the ​‘Improv­ing Pub­lic Access’ (IPA) scheme, the find­ings of which will inform trans­ition­al arrange­ments and any future schemes for improv­ing access in rur­al areas. Data to be reviewed includes; the types of paths, lengths, pop­ular­ity of options, types of pro­ject and geo­graph­ic­al spread, as well quan­ti­fy­ing the bene­fits. A wider con­sulta­tion is planned for the sum­mer months with find­ings from the review and recom­mend­a­tions presen­ted to the NAF meet­ing in Septem­ber. For­um mem­bers high­lighted the suc­cess of the scheme in terms of uptake and deliv­ery and wel­comed fur­ther input to the con­sulta­tion. A small NAF work­ing group will meet over the sum­mer to feed into the SNH review.

Path Map­ping – Ram­blers Scot­land provided an update to For­um mem­bers on their path map­ping pro­ject. A pro­ject man­ager is cur­rently being sought and a poten­tial test area iden­ti­fied around South Loch Lomond and Dun­bar­ton­shire. Start­ing with pub­lic­ally avail­able data­sets the pro­ject aims to devel­op a nation­al con­sist­ent data set of paths which are mapped, appro­pri­ately way­marked and pro­moted. Fur­ther updates will be presen­ted in Septem­ber once the pro­ject is under­way. The For­um also dis­cussed poten­tial syn­er­gies between this pro­ject and the work of the Core Path and OS map­ping sub­group. The need to con­tin­ue to pro­mote the bene­fits of map­ping core paths on an OS back­drop would con­tin­ue to be pur­sued through a num­ber of con­tacts includ­ing Scot­tish Government.

Tour­ism and the Value of Out­door Access — A present­a­tion by Vis­it Scot­land con­firmed the import­ance of Scot­tish out­door access to the vis­it­or eco­nomy (worth a total of £11.3 bil­lion) and explained how it is cur­rently used to mar­ket Scot­land. Whist the biggest driver for vis­it­ing Scot­land remains the scenery and land­scape (High­lands and Islands, Argyll and the Nation­al Parks), the range of activ­it­ies and ​‘to get away from it all’ also fea­ture highly as key motiv­at­ors for the tour­ism sec­tor. This is par­tic­u­larly rel­ev­ant for both of the Nation­al Parks, Dum­fries and Gal­lo­way and the Scot­tish Bor­ders, although oth­er areas can bene­fit from these trends.

In terms of the value to the eco­nomy For­um mem­bers heard that com­bined fig­ures for long and short walk­ing are estim­ated at around £1.7 bil­lion, and for cyc­ling and moun­tain bik­ing £105 mil­lion. These mar­kets along with wild­life and dark skies/​astro tour­ism are all set to increase. Oth­er vis­it­or trends include those seek­ing res­tor­at­ive recre­ation, self-enrich­ment, green get­aways, sens­ory tour­ism and immers­ive exper­i­ences. Vis­it Scot­land work with many part­ners to pro­mote Scot­land as an activ­ity des­tin­a­tion and to con­nect with nature. Vis­it Scot­land also pro­mote the Scot­tish Out­door Access Code through a vari­ety of guides and also online to encour­age vis­it­ors to act respons­ibly. A num­ber of For­um mem­bers offered to work fur­ther with Vis­it Scot­land to pro­mote respons­ible access across a num­ber of sectors.

SOAC Mes­sages for tar­get groups – SNH out­lined work to improve SOAC mes­sages to a num­ber of tar­get audi­ences. New con­cise guid­ance for camper­van and motorhome users has been placed on the SOAC web­site. It draws on exist­ing guid­ance from ​‘Camper’ the organ­isa­tion for camper­van rent­al sec­tor. Brief guid­ance about the use of drones is also being final­ised and takes into account new guid­ance on com­mer­cial drone use and the rise in leis­ure drone use. A small group of For­um mem­bers are work­ing on options for improv­ing mes­saging about dogs and live­stock based on the cur­rent advice in the Code. The recent SPARC cam­paign was thought to have

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reached 2 mil­lion through radio cov­er­age and 6.6 mil­lion through social media, widen­ing the audi­ence reached. How­ever, reports of attacks on live­stock con­tin­ue to increase and sus­tained mes­saging as well as oth­er meas­ures to tackle unac­com­pan­ied dogs will be required. In terms of devel­op­ing SOAC mes­sages for young people the For­um heard about SNH’s work with Young Scot. An ini­tial ques­tion­naire of young people was point­ing to the use of social media to deliv­er SOAC mes­sages and vari­ous products will be designed with this in mind.

Medi­ation — A report from the first meet­ing of the NAF sub­group on medi­ation was presen­ted to the For­um and views invited on wheth­er or not it would be use­ful for NAF to pre­pare a guid­ance note on this sub­ject. Exper­i­ences on the use of medi­ation by NAF mem­bers includ­ing cor­res­pond­ing mem­bers and LAFs would be sought. The sub group meets again at the end of June.

NAF/LAF Joint meet­ing 2019 – A sum­mary note from the joint NAF/LAF meet­ing on ​‘Improv­ing the NAF/LAF Net­work’ was dis­cussed. A total of 23 LAFs were rep­res­en­ted along with approx­im­ately half of NAF mem­bers. Feed­back from the event was pos­it­ive with sup­port for the more inter­act­ive approach, great­er net­work­ing time and the vari­ety of top­ics selec­ted by the LAFs them­selves. A sim­il­ar format would be con­sidered for next year. For­um mem­bers dis­cussed the issues raised in annex 1 of the paper and poten­tial top­ics for 2020 includ­ing; more inform­a­tion on resources and fund­ing for access and pro­mo­tion of the role of LAFs with­in councils.

Scot­tish Forestry and Forest and Land Scot­land A brief descrip­tion of the two new exec­ut­ive agen­cies for forestry was presen­ted to the For­um. i) Scot­tish Forestry (https://forestry.gov.scot/) rep­res­ents the policy, sup­port and reg­u­lat­ory func­tions, ii) Forest and Land Scot­land (https://forestryandland.gov.scot/) man­ages the forest estate, approx.10% of Scot­land, includ­ing the man­age­ment of forests for tour­ism and recre­ation. A new cor­por­ate plan is cur­rently out to con­sulta­tion. https://consult.gov.scot/environment-forestry/forestry-and-land-scotland-corporate-plan/.

NAF mem­ber­ship Nick Cole atten­ded the meet­ing as the new LAF rep­res­ent­at­ive along with Mar­tin Duncan the new depute loc­al author­it­ies rep­res­ent­at­ive. It is hoped that both these appoint­ments will help strengthen the links between the NAF and indi­vidu­al LAFs. LAFs are encour­aged to raise any per­tin­ent items for dis­cus­sion with Nick to be raised at future meetings.

Future NAF meet­ings The next For­um meet­ings are; Fri­day 20 Septem­ber 2019 at Bat­tle­by, Wed­nes­day 29 Janu­ary 2020 Bat­tle­by, Joint NAF/LAF meet­ing 2020 (date and ven­ue tbc). n

For more inform­a­tion or com­ment on any of the above top­ics, please con­tact the NAF Sec­ret­ary — Janice Win­ning ([email protected]; 0131 316 2639). Fur­ther inform­a­tion can be found on the Nation­al Access For­um pages at http://​www​.out​door​ac​cess​-scot​land​.com/​a​c​c​e​s​s​-​f​orum/.

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