NPPP 2022 SEA Scoping Report: Topic 5 Material Assents

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan, SEA scop­ing Baseline inform­a­tion Top­ic 5 – Mater­i­al assets Con­tents Ques­tions for con­sulta­tion author­it­ies Con­text 2 Energy gen­er­a­tion 2 Energy infra­struc­ture changes 3 Geo­lo­gic­al min­er­al resources 3 Waste 3 Trans­port infra­struc­ture 5 Rail 8 Digit­al infra­struc­ture 10 Pro­posed SEA object­ives 12

Ques­tions for con­sulta­tion authorities

1. Is there any­thing miss­ing from the Top­ic baseline?
2. Are there any errors in what is presented?
3. Are there any new ini­ti­at­ives, research pro­jects, plans, pro­grammes or strategies or oth­er things that will be report­ing / imple­men­ted over the next 12 – 18 months that are rel­ev­ant to the Top­ic, which may need to be included as the SEA progresses?

Con­text Mater­i­al assets can include a wide range of appar­ently dis­par­ate interests. In this top­ic paper, con­sid­er­a­tion of the baseline has been giv­en to energy, waste, geo­lo­gic­al mater­i­als used as a resource, trans­port and digit­al infra­struc­ture. Oth­er interests that also con­trib­ute to mater­i­al assets but offer wider envir­on­ment­al ser­vices, such as water and geo­di­versity, are con­sidered sep­ar­ately under Top­ics 3 and 4.

Energy gen­er­a­tion In order to safe­guard the spe­cial land­scape qual­it­ies of the Park, the Park Author­ity has his­tor­ic­ally imple­men­ted restrict­ive policies on large scale renew­able energy devel­op­ment in the Park. As a res­ult, devel­op­ments of energy gen­er­at­ing infra­struc­ture have been rel­at­ively minor in scale and num­ber. Fig­ure I shows the total kW of renew­able energy gen­er­a­tion devel­op­ment gran­ted per­mis­sion in the Park, accord­ing to data from plan­ning per­mis­sions gran­ted by Park Author­ity and the five Loc­al Author­it­ies included with­in the Park. (It should be noted that this may not reflect the amount actu­ally gen­er­ated, due to some per­mis­sions not being imple­men­ted and also vari­ations in pre­dicted and actu­al gen­er­a­tion once built.)

kw gran­ted per­mis­sion 9000 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 Bio­mass Sol­ar Ground source heat pumps Wind Hydro

Fig­ure I — kW of installed renew­able energy gen­er­a­tion gran­ted plan­ning per­mis­sion in the Park since 2005 Installing cer­tain renew­able energy tech­no­lo­gies, such as sol­ar pan­els and bio­mass boil­ers, is with­in the per­mit­ted devel­op­ment rights of house­hold­ers and busi­nesses provided cer­tain con­di­tions are met. This means that no data is avail­able on energy gen­er­a­tion installed under per­mit­ted devel­op­ment rights as it is not recor­ded offi­cially. There­fore, fig­ure I does not offer a com­pre­hens­ive indic­a­tion of the amount of energy gen­er­ated with­in the Park — the fig­ures are likely to be high­er. 2

Energy infra­struc­ture changes Scot­tish and South­ern Elec­tri­city Net­works (SSEN) are respons­ible for elec­tri­city trans­mis­sion in the Park. There are no major new energy infra­struc­ture pro­jects in the Park, how­ever there is a pro­ject to change energy infra­struc­ture between Boat of Garten and Nethy Bridge. The VISTA (Visu­al Impact of Scot­tish Trans­mis­sion Assets) pro­ject in Scot­land seeks to mit­ig­ate the visu­al impacts on energy infra­struc­ture on Nation­al Parks and Nation­al Scen­ic Areas. In the Park, SSEN are remov­ing 46 pylons and 12 km of over­head power lines between Boat of Garten and Nethy Bridge, relo­cat­ing the cables underground.

Geo­lo­gic­al min­er­al resources The Brit­ish Geo­lo­gic­al Soci­ety iden­ti­fies 4 act­ive quar­ries oper­at­ing in the Park (https://​www​.bgs​.ac​.uk/​G​e​o​I​ndex/), based on 2014 inform­a­tion. How­ever addi­tion­al quar­ries are known to oper­ate or have con­sent in the Park. For example, Carn Dhom­h­nu­ill Bhain quarry near Dal­whin­nie and Broom­hill quarry near Dul­nain Bridge were gran­ted con­sent to recom­mence extrac­tion activ­it­ies in 2018. The quar­ries in the Park can extract a vari­ety of min­er­al resources (table 1) mainly used for con­struc­tion works.

Table I ‑avail­able inform­a­tion for quar­ries in the Park Quarry, loc­a­tion | Min­er­al resource extrac­ted —— | —— Alvie, East­er Delfour (near Kin­craig) | igneous and meta­morph­ic rock Alvie, Dalraddy (near Aviemore) | sand and gravel Brick­ford quarry (Strath­don) | sand and gravel Broom­hill (near Dul­nain Bridge) | unspe­cified Carn Dhom­h­nu­ill Bhain (near Dal­whin­nie) | unspe­cified aggreg­ate Gran­ish (near Aviemore) | sand and gravel Mead­owside (near Kin­craig) | igneous and meta­morph­ic rock

Waste Estim­ates of house­hold waste and recyc­ling between 2011 and 2018 were recor­ded by SEPA at Loc­al Author­ity scale, avail­able via https://www.environment.gov.scot/data/data- ana­lys­is/­house­hold-waste/. 3

Data at the scale of the Park was not recor­ded, how­ever it is pos­sible to estim­ate this using pop­u­la­tion data. Mid-year pop­u­la­tion estim­ates have been used as a proxy for pro­por­tion­ally attrib­ut­ing the waste pro­duced and recycled for the Loc­al Author­ity areas with­in the Park to the Park itself. It is recog­nised that this is a blunt means of estim­a­tion. In the absence of data recor­ded at a Park scale how­ever, fig­ures 2 and 3 offer an altern­at­ive gen­er­al­ised baseline.

tonnes 12,000 10,000 8,000 6,000 4,000 2,000 0 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 House­hold waste House­hold recycling

Fig­ure 2 — estim­ated amount of house­hold waste pro­duced and recycled in the Park dur­ing 2011 — 2018 pro­por­tion of recyc­ling by area 60% 55% 50% 45% 40% 35% 30% 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Aber­deen­shire High­land Moray Perth and Kinross Park

Fig­ure 3 — estim­ated recyc­ling rates by Loc­al Author­ity area in the Park dur­ing 2011 to 2018, com­pared to the Park aver­age 4

House­hold waste per per­son pro­duced in the Park is high­er than the Scot­tish aver­age, which for 2018 was 440 kg per per­son (com­pared to Park aver­age of 526kg). The recyc­ling rate is slightly lower but com­par­able to the Scot­tish aver­age, which in 2018 was 44.7% for Scot­land com­pared to 43.6% in the Park.

Trans­port infra­struc­ture The Park bene­fits from rel­at­ively good major trans­port infra­struc­ture links com­pared to many oth­er rur­al areas in Scot­land. A main­line rail­way between Perth and Inverness and four A Class roads (A9, A93, A95 and A86) con­nect the area with High­land, Moray, Aber­deen­shire, Perth and Kinross and the west of Scot­land (fig­ure 4). Of the A roads, one is sub­ject to a cur­rent improve­ment pro­ject. The A9 Dualling Strategy aims to link exist­ing sec­tions of dual car­riage­way to cre­ate a con­tinu­ous dual car­riage­way between Inverness and Perth by 2025. It is par­tially under­way, how­ever all major trans­port pro­jects are cur­rently (2019) sub­ject to con­sid­er­a­tion under the Stra­tegic Trans­port Pro­jects Review by Trans­port Scotland.

A roads B roads rail line rail­way sta­tion A86 A889 A9 A95 A939 A9 A938 Car­rbridge A95 Aviemore A939 A944 A9 Kin­gussie 0 A86 New­ton­more A9 Dal­whin­nie Blair Atholl A93 A93 A9 0 5 10 20 30 40 North Kilometers

Repro­duced by per­mis­sion of Ord­nance Sur­vey on behalf of HMSO. © Crown copy­right and data­base right 2019. All rights reserved. Ord­nance Sur­vey Licence num­ber 100040965 Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity. Fig­ure 4 — major road and rail links outwith/​into the Park The geo­graphy of the Park means that links between cer­tain parts of the Park are rel­at­ively poor due to topo­graphy and cli­mate affect­ing their travel times and passab­il­ity in poor weath­er. 5

Net­works of oth­er A, B, C and unclas­si­fied roads provide access to oth­er parts of the Park, although many are nar­row and twisty, increas­ing jour­ney times. The travel times have an effect on access to ser­vices for res­id­ents and vis­it­ors. The Scot­tish Index of Mul­tiple Depriva­tion (SIMD) gives an indic­a­tion some of the access­ib­il­ity issues faced by cer­tain parts of the Park, with 11 of the 24 data zones used to define the Park fall­ing with­in the most deprived 10% of the Index in terms of geo­graph­ic access to ser­vices (fig­ures 5 — 9). How­ever such a situ­ation is not unex­pec­ted for such a rur­al area, and none of the data zones in the Park rank highly in terms of over­all deprivation.

North Glen­liv­et Grant­own-on-Spey Car­rbridge Tomin­toul Boat of Garten Nethy Bridge Aviemore Kin­craig Kin­gussie New­ton­more Lag­gan Brae­mar Inverey 0 Dal­whin­nie Blair Atholl Kil­liecrankie Spit­tal of Glen­shee Strath­don Bal­later 0 5 10 20 30 40 Kilo­met­ers Repro­duced by per­mis­sion of Ord­nance Sur­vey on behalf of HMSO. Crown copy­right and data­base right 2019. All rights reserved. Ord­nance Sur­vey Licence num­ber 100040965 Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority.

Fig­ure 5 — SIMD 2016 data zones ranked with­in the 10% most deprived accord­ing to drive times to ser­vices 6

0 – 5 minutes 0 – 5 minutes North 5 – 10 minutes 5 – 10 minutes 10 – 15 minutes

15 minutes 0 5 10 20 30 40 Kilo­met­ers 0 5 10 20 30 40 Kilometers

Repro­duced by per­mis­sion of Ord­nance Sur­vey on behalf of HMSO. Crown copy­right and data­base right 2019. All rights reserved. Ord­nance Sur­vey Licence num­ber 100040965 Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity. Fig­ure 6 (left) — SIMD 2016 aver­age drive time to GP sur­gery Fig­ure 7 (right) — SIMD 2016 aver­age drive time to a post office 0 – 5 minutes 5 – 10 minutes 10 – 15 minutes 15 – 20 minutes

20 minutes 0 5 10 20 30 40 Kilo­met­ers 0 – 5 minutes 5 – 10 minutes 10 – 15 minutes 15 – 20 minutes 20 – 25 minutes 25 – 30 minutes 30 – 35 minutes 35 – 40 minutes 40 minutes North 0 5 10 20 30 40 Kilometers

Repro­duced by per­mis­sion of Ord­nance Sur­vey on behalf of HMSO. © Crown copy­right and data­base right 2019. All rights reserved. Ord­nance Sur­vey Licence num­ber 100040965 Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity. Fig­ure 8 (left) — SIMD 2016 aver­age drive time to pet­rol sta­tion Fig­ure 9 (right) — SIMD 2016 aver­age drive time to a retail centre 7

0 – 5 minutes 5 – 10 minutes 0 5 10 20 30 40 Kilo­met­ers 0 – 5 5 – 10 North 10 – 15 15 – 20 20 – 25 25 – 30 30 – 35 35 – 40 0 10 20 30 40 Kilometers

Repro­duced by per­mis­sion of Ord­nance Sur­vey on behalf of HMSO. Crown copy­right and data­base right 2019. All rights reserved. Ord­nance Sur­vey Licence num­ber 100040965 Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity. Fig­ure 10 (left) — SIMD 2016 aver­age drive time to primary school Fig­ure 11 (right) — SIMD 2016 aver­age drive time to sec­ond­ary school The drive times demon­strate the nature of the road infra­struc­ture in the Park, with the pop­u­la­tion often hav­ing to travel for a long time to reach key ser­vices. The rur­al nature of the area is also demon­strated through the rel­at­ively high instances of car own­er­ship. Accord­ing to the 2011 Census around 85% of house­holds had access to a car or van, which is high­er than the Scot­tish level of around 70%. As a res­ult, a high pro­por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion of the Park have a reli­ance on the road infra­struc­ture of the area for access to ser­vices, as well as for work (Top­ic 8, Pop­u­la­tion and human health).

Rail The High­land Main Rail­way Line runs between Inverness and Perth, through the Park with sta­tions at Carr-Bridge, Aviemore, Kin­gussie, New­ton­more, Dal­whin­nie and Blair Atholl. Much of the line is single track, so trains com­ing in oppos­ite dir­ec­tions are often timed to arrive at sta­tions at the same time, where cross­ing loops per­mit them to pass. When trains are delayed and miss the sched­uled cross­ing point, this can cause sig­ni­fic­ant delays for oth­er trains that can­not pro­ceed until the line is clear. Using annu­al pas­sen­ger usage at sta­tions based on sales of tick­ets as an indic­at­or of the over­all use of the line, then there is an indic­a­tion that use has increased sig­ni­fic­antly with­in the Park over the last 17 years (fig­ure 12 and table 1). 8

Sta­tion useage 140,000 120,000 100,000 80,000 60,000 40,000 20,000 0 Year 1998 – 99 1999 – 00 2000-01 2001-02 2004-05 2005-06 Stand­ard Reduced Sea­son 2006-07 2007-08 2008-09 2009-10 2010-11 2011-12 2012 – 13 2013 – 14 2014 – 15 2015 – 16 2016 – 17 2017 – 18

Fig­ure 12 — Office of Rail and Road fig­ures for total annu­al pas­sen­ger usage (the sum of entrances and exits) by fare type at sta­tions with­in the Park (no data avail­able for ²⁰⁰²⁄₀₃ or ²⁰⁰³⁄₀₄, source www​.orr​.gov​.uk/​s​t​a​t​i​s​t​i​c​s​/​p​u​b​l​i​s​h​e​d​-​s​t​a​t​s​/​s​t​a​t​i​o​n​-​u​s​a​g​e​-​e​s​t​i​mates) Table I — Office of Road and Rail annu­al pas­sen­ger usage at sta­tions (the sum of entrances and exits) with­in the Park 1999 – 2018 Num­ber of pas­sen­gers using the sta­tion Year | Carr-Bridge | Aviemore | Kin­gussie | New­ton­more | Dal­whin­nie | Blair Atholl | Total —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— 1999 – 2000 | 2,432 | 61,795 | 21,196 | 4,013 | 1,937 | 10,893 | 102,266 2000 – 2001 | 2,441 | 62,338 | 19,207 | 4,146 | 2,027 | 9,341 | 99,500 2001 – 2002 | 1,930 | 70,230 | 22,585 | 4,062 | 2,062 | 8,573 | 109,442 2003 – 2004 | 1,531 | 70,272 | 23,815 | 4,184 | 2,066 | 8,613 | 110,481 2004 – 2005 | 1,910 | 80,977 | 27,725 | 5,396 | 1,619 | 11,708 | 129,335 2005 – 2006 | 2,987 | 91,456 | 30,045 | 6,815 | 2,013 | 11,896 | 145,212 2006 – 2007 | 3,954 | 101,294 | 32,135 | 6,585 | 1,774 | 10,491 | 156,233 2007 – 2008 | 5,508 | 108,353 | 33,416 | 7,060 | 1,975 | 10,443 | 166,755 2008 – 2009 | 3,796 | 121,090 | 38,054 | 7,446 | 2,296 | 10,580 | 183,262 2009 – 2010 | 4,500 | 124,972 | 35,838 | 7,972 | 2,208 | 11,572 | 187,062 2010 – 2011 | 5,118 | 132,336 | 38,544 | 9,484 | 1,894 | 13,948 | 201,324 2011 – 2012 | 5,636 | 132,052 | 40,298 | 9,406 | 1,984 | 12,608 | 201,984 2012 – 2013 | 4,454 | 136,456 | 40,954 | 8,958 | 2,172 | 14,280 | 207,274 9

2013 – 2014 | 5,540 | 141,311 | 41,400 | 8,326 | 2,472 | 14,084 | 213,133 2014 – 2015 | 6,256 | 150,724 | 42,522 | 8,636 | 2,460 | 16,062 | 226,660 2015 – 2016 | 6,898 | 152,082 | 42,850 | 9,432 | 2,392 | 16,652 | 230,306 2016 – 2017 | 5,808 | 145,200 | 44,200 | 8,770 | 3,188 | 17,598 | 224,764 2017 – 2018 | 6,064 | 147,964 | 44,736 | 9,194 | 3,372 | 19,802 | 231,132

The data on fare types also gives an indic­a­tion of the types of jour­ney being made. For example, while, sea­son tick­et use remains extremely low rel­at­ive to Scot­land (4% in the Park com­pared to around 28%), the increase in their use between 1997 and 2016 (table 1), par­tic­u­larly at Aviemore sta­tion, may offer an insight into the impact of the sig­ni­fic­ant pop­u­la­tion growth exper­i­enced by Aviemore over the past 15 years has had.

Digit­al infra­struc­ture Good digit­al con­nectiv­ity is increas­ingly seen as a basic ser­vice that is required by res­id­ents, busi­nesses, stu­dents, vis­it­ors and the pub­lic sec­tor. It allows busi­nesses to func­tion more effect­ively and expand their reach, people to con­nect with each oth­er as well as access ser­vices such as health care and edu­ca­tion from remote areas. There are cur­rently 28 tele­phone exchanges that cov­er the Park, not all of which are loc­ated with­in the Park bound­ary. Com­bined, they ser­vice around 15,065 tele­phone con­nec­tions (not all with­in the Park area) of which 13,682 are classed as res­id­en­tial and 1,176 as non-res­id­en­tial. All 28 exchanges are enabled to provide asym­met­ric digit­al sub­scriber line (ADSL) broad­band, with all but two cap­able of provid­ing con­nec­tion speeds of up to 8 Mbps. (ASDL is a broad­band con­nec­tion provided over home tele­phone lines.) The two exchanges that are not equipped for these speeds are Clova and Advie, which only provide speeds of up to 512 Kbps (accord­ing to https://​avail​ab​il​ity​.sam​knows​.com/​b​r​o​a​d​b​a​n​d​/​b​r​o​a​dband). As part of the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Digit­al Scot­land Super­fast Broad­band pro­gramme, high- speed fibre broad­band net­works were imple­men­ted for 95% of Scot­tish premises by Decem­ber 2017. Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment fig­ures for ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ identi­fy 10,352 premises with­in the Park as hav­ing access to fibre broad­band, with around 87% of these hav­ing speeds of > 24Mbs — although it is unclear how many of these poten­tial con­nec­tions were as a res­ult of the pro­gramme and how many already had access. Focus has sub­sequently switched to the Reach­ing 100% pro­gramme, which does include Moray and High­land, aim­ing to get to 100% of premises with broad­band speeds of at least 30 Mbps by 2021. The tender for the north area (which includes the Park) has just been awar­ded, but the pro­gramme of works is unknown at present. 10

In addi­tion to the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment pro­grammes for improved access­ib­il­ity to high speed broad­band in Scot­land is the Uni­ver­sal Ser­vice Oblig­a­tion (USO — http://​research​brief​ings​.files​.par​lia​ment​.uk/​d​o​c​u​m​e​n​t​s​/​C​B​P​-​8​1​4​6​/​C​B​P​-​8​1​4​6.pdf). The USO is a UK-wide meas­ure inten­ded as a min­im­um tech­nic­al stand­ard and fin­an­cial cost to provide broad­band to those premises that do not have access to a decent and afford­able con­nec­tion. This means premises that do not have access to a con­nec­tion that can deliv­er 10 Mbps down­load speed and which costs less than £45 per month have a leg­al right to request a decent broad­band con­nec­tion up to a cost threshold of £3,400. Res­id­ents and busi­nesses will be able to make requests under the USO from 20 March 2020. In rela­tion of mobile cov­er­age, there are a num­ber of ​‘not spots’ with­in the Park for mobile recep­tion. How­ever the Scot­tish 4G Infill pro­gramme, which seeks to address up to 60 ​‘not spots’ in Scot­land by 2022, does not include any areas with­in the Park. The impend­ing roll out of 5G should play an increas­ingly import­ant role in improv­ing digit­al access in more rur­al and remote areas, although it is unclear wheth­er 5G will suf­fer from the same not spot issues as 4G. Dif­fer­ent mod­els are cur­rently being assessed to reduce the deploy­ment and oper­a­tion­al costs of provid­ing a 5G net­work in rur­al and remote areas, so the baseline at present is zero. 11

Pro­posed SEA object­ives SEA main object­ive | Sub-object­ive —— | —— 5a: Encour­age the sus­tain­able use and reuse of mater­i­al assets | Will there be an effect on sus­tain­able use of nat­ur­al resources (eg water, tim­ber, aggreg­ates)? | Will there be an effect on the sus­tain­able use and man­age­ment of exist­ing and pro­posed infra­struc­ture (eg water, heat, energy or flood pro­tec­tion infra­struc­ture)? | Will there be an effect on the use of finite resources through the use of sec­ond­ary and recycled materials?

12