Note of Meeting 10th November 2021

CAIRNGORMS LOC­AL OUT­DOOR ACCESS FOR­UM Wed­nes­day 10^th Novem­ber 2021 from 6.30pm – 8.00pm CNPA Lifes­ize meet­ing room

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

Who	Rep­res­ent­ing
Adam Streeter-Smith	CNPA
Eilidh Scob­bie	LOAF
Elean­or Mackintosh	CNPA Board
Gav­in Clark	NatureScot
Jenny Allen	CNPA (minutes)
Jonath­an Kitchinger	Scot­tish Canoe Association
John Gri­er­son	LOAF — Chair
Neil Wilson	LOAF
Pete Crane	CNPA
Pete Wright	LOAF
Sandy McCook	Nethy Bridge CC
Tre­vor Thornley	LOAF
Uwe Stone­man	RSPB

Apo­lo­gies
Alisa Vil­le­g­as	LOAF
Mark John­ston	LOAF

Item	Action
Wel­come and Minutes of last meet­ing on 25 August 2021
JG wel­comed all to the meeting.
Mat­ters arising from Minutes
Meet­ing note agreed
Pre­vi­ous Actions
1. AQSS to pub­lish meet­ing note on LOAF meet­ing webpage — AQSS cla­ri­fied that the note should be agreed at the fol­low­ing meet­ing and then put onto webpage. He con­firmed that pre­vi­ous meet­ings are now up to date.
2. AQSS to facil­it­ate response to NPP4 with a focus on actions and out­comes rel­ev­ant to out­door access. On agenda for cur­rent meeting.
3. AQSS to feed­back to LOAF on out­comes of the stake­hold­er meet­ing on Dal­whin­nie Rail­way Cross­ing. On agenda for cur­rent meeting.
4. AQSS to feed­back to LOAF on out­comes of the stake­hold­er meet­ing. To be covered in AOCB.
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Item	Action
—-	—-
Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship plan review.
AQSS intro­duced the item high­light­ing that inform­a­tion has gone out to mem­bers ask­ing them to look at the plan and raise any issues in LOAF or as an indi­vidu­al. There may not be any­thing con­tro­ver­sial in terms of access, but a review of infra­struc­ture and core path plans is part of the NPP, so there will still be LOAF input to shape it.
No issues were raised in the meet­ing. JG com­men­ted on the length and duplic­a­tion with­in the plan, but that there didn’t seem to be any­thing that would impact on access. TT com­men­ted that it was good to read about the policies and links in the doc­u­ment that give the back­ground that the NPP has been based on.
PC sug­ges­ted that if LOAF is sup­port­ive of pro­pos­als in the NPP then sub­mit­ting response to that effect would be use­ful, as often only neg­at­ive responses are received.
Action: JG will sub­mit a report to say that LOAF is sup­port­ive of the plan.	JG
EM will also pass on the pos­it­ive response at the Board meeting.
Man­aging Vis­it­ors update
PC gave an update on devel­op­ments since the last meeting:
• The CNPA sea­son­al rangers and rangers from some of the part­ner ser­vices have now fin­ished. There remain 4 CNPA rangers and ~20 part­ner rangers around the Park.
• Feed­back has been col­lec­ted from part­ners, rangers and oth­er groups, and has all been very positive.
• Kate For­bes MSP has also expressed her sup­port. She has been inter­ested in the work between Rangers and Police Scot­land, as les­sons learned may be applic­able to oth­er hot spots in the Highlands.
• Work on amen­it­ies being done over the winter include:
Ο Aber­deen Coun­cil – Glen­shee pub­lic toilets
Ο Grant­own — pub­lic toi­lets by Museum
Ο Glen­more pub­lic toi­lets refurbished
Ο Loch an Eili­en – toi­lets have been reopened.
• Loch Garten – fur­ther work is going on includ­ing upgrad­ing the Vis­it­or Centre and installing a totally access­ible toilet.
Ο High­land Coun­cil – Glen­more road­side park­ing work
Ο Din­net estate – expand­ing the car park
CNPA and OAS were turned down on their applic­a­tion for Beinn a’ Ghlo car­park upgrade. The pro­ject has plan­ning and landown­er per­mis­sion, but needs anoth­er way to fund it.
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Item	Action
—-	—-
JG com­men­ted that CNPA need to pub­li­cise the work that is being done more. He also said that the loc­al feed­back about Rangers had all been positive.
PW asked if there had been any feed­back from any the Com­munity Coun­cils. PC has sent out a ques­tion­naire to all the CCs, and has had one response. He assumes that the lack of response from oth­ers is a pos­it­ive reflec­tion on the work that has been done.
Gav­in Clark – Oper­a­tions Man­ager for NatureScot in Tay­side and Grampian
GC last presen­ted to LOAF at the June meet­ing. There had been a sig­ni­fic­ant increase in vis­it­ors going in and on Loch Kin­nord, in par­tic­u­lar paddle­boarders. In June they had just intro­duced new guid­ance on access to the water. Updates since then:
• Com­pli­ance with the restric­ted access requests had been reas­on­ably good.
• They have received one form­al com­plaint about the restric­tions, and oth­er groups have made neg­at­ive comments.
• They have had a num­ber of writ­ten rep­res­ent­a­tions in sup­port of the restrictions.
• Annex I of the paper has a sum­mary of the bird counts made before and after the restric­tions were brought in. GC high­lighted the dif­fer­ence in the bar charts for before the 16th June com­pared to after, although he poin­ted out that oth­er factors may have influ­ence the change as well.
?? are pro­pos­ing to do a more thor­ough review of the sea­son, and to repeat and expand the stake­hold­er con­sulta­tion. They want to look at oth­er meas­ures that might be appro­pri­ate (eg zon­ing; and a dis­cus­sion about wheth­er dif­fer­ent types of water­s­ports have dif­fer­ent levels of impact).
They are also aware of the need to take in to account the impacts on oth­er sites from activ­ity users who are dis­placed from Loch Kinnord.
Annex 2 gives stake­hold­ers who were con­sul­ted last time, and planned addi­tion­al stake­hold­ers to con­sult this time. GC pro­poses to write up find­ings and bring back to LOAF in February.
Jonath­an Kit­ch­ing intro­duced him­self as the Scot­tish Canoe Asso­ci­ation Access Officer for NE Scot­land and the Dee Catch­ment area. He was involved in the nego­ti­ations 10 years ago when sailed craft were asked to not use Loch Kin­nord. He under­stands the reas­on for the cur­rent increase in restric­tions, ad agreed that zon­ing isn’t a feas­ible solu­tion. He agreed with GC’s state­ment that vis­it­ors had been very good and that the paddles­port com­munity had tried hard to be com­pli­ant; how­ever he asked if the length of time that the access on the loch was restric­ted for could be reduced by 4 weeks.
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Item	Action
—-	—-
GC said that the length of time for the restric­tions had been based on the recom­mend­a­tion of specialists.
JK offered to be involved in fur­ther dis­cus­sions par­tic­u­larly around dis­place­ment, as he is famil­i­ar with water­s­ports ven­ues across NE Scotland.
GC asked if LOAF had any sug­ges­tions about the planned stake­hold­er con­sulta­tion and next steps. There were no fur­ther com­ments, which was taken as the group is content.	GC
Action – GC will report back to Feb meeting
Paper 2 – RSPB Uwe Stone­man and Sandy McCook from Nethy­bridge Com­munity Council
US intro­duced the topic:
• This is the first Vis­it­or and Access plan that RSPB have put togeth­er for reserve since they took over in 1988. It came about from ​‘explo­sion’ in vis­it­or access after Covid.
• It’s some­thing that the loc­al Com­munity has been very inter­ested in, and has been developed in con­junc­tion with a work­ing group of 15 loc­al people as well as wider loc­al con­sultat­ive meetings.
• They are now bring­ing it to LOAF to seek advice on the plan, and on any ways to get more input to make doc­u­ment stronger.
• They have been fol­low­ing Scot­tish Land Commission’s guid­ance on com­munity engagement.
SMc gave some more back­ground. Until recently the RSPB at Forest Lodge has been very sep­ar­ate from the vil­lage, and he com­men­ded US and his team for the pro­gress in bring­ing the two together.
There were ques­tions and dis­cus­sion around the fol­low­ing points:
• The water­s­ports issue is quite sim­il­ar to that at Loch Kin­nord. How­ever hav­ing Loch Mor­lich close makes it easi­er to ask people to go there instead. While the vis­it­or centre pulls people into the area, it and the two rangers also makes it easi­er to engage with visitors.
• The RSPB has fund­ing from Cairngorms Con­nect for a feas­ib­il­ity study on rerout­ing the Spey­side Way.
• There is con­cern about the amount of activ­ity on the RSPB owned land on the Cairngorm plat­eau, and they are hop­ing to get fund­ing for the 2 ranger posts at Loch Garten and a third one on the hills.
• There was dis­cus­sion about wheth­er the RSPB plan should include a sec­tion on out­door events. There is a ten­sion between quiet enjoy­ment of the area and more act­ive organ­ised activ­it­ies. Could there be guid­ance about what events the RSPB could sup­port (eg Nethy High­land Games), and what doesn’t fit with the eth­os of the area? There is no dir­ect way
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Item	Action
—-	—-
to restrict events, but some guid­ance about types of event and appro­pri­ate areas to use might be of use
JG sum­mar­ised the dis­cus­sion that the con­sulta­tion and com­mu­nic­a­tion had been excel­lent, and a good example of how to carry out a con­sulta­tion. LOAF would wel­come to be kept informed on pro­gress, and US was invited to a future meet­ing to update on it.
Dal­whin­nie Rail­way Crossing
AQSS updated the group. On 22nd Septem­ber Net­work Rail (NR) met with rep­res­ent­at­ive groups to talk through decision and why the cross­ing will remain closed for now. The situ­ation is com­plex as NR has strict rules on health and safety. There have been a num­ber of occa­sions where people have been observed not cross­ing suf­fi­ciently quickly to be with­in the safe lim­its, and there are dif­fi­culties with solu­tions such as traffic lights due to the prox­im­ity of the sta­tion and sight­lines. It was high­lighted in the meet­ing that people climb­ing over the locked gates are mak­ing the situ­ation more dan­ger­ous. Scot­ways believe the cross­ing might be a Right of Way. NR has said they will look at the situ­ation again.
It was noted that LOAF haven’t put out a state­ment about the situ­ation, and it was felt it would be appro­pri­ate to do this.
Action – JG will write to Net­work Rail and Trans­port Scot­land, copy­ing in CNPA, Kate For­bes and High­land Council.	JG
AOCB
At the next LOAF meet­ing AQSS sug­ges­ted the fol­low­ing are discussed:
• Mem­ber­ship struc­ture of CLOAF and stand­ing procedures
• Loch Kin­nord proposals
• Case­work review – end of year
• Stra­tegic infra­struc­ture plan
JG thanked every­one who came, par­tic­u­larly those present­ing papers.
Next Meet­ing
• January/​February 2022
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