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CAIRNGORMS LOCAL OUTDOOR ACCESS FORUM 
Paper Four – Annex 2 SE Summary of Monitoring Returns Date 31 October 2006 



CAIRNGORMS LOCAL OUTDOOR ACCESS FORUM 


Monitoring of Access Authorities 

The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 gives a range of duties and powers to access 
authorities, including to uphold and facilitate access rights, and to plan a system of core 
paths to give the public reasonable access throughout their areas. 

In order to monitor progress and expenditure on these additional responsibilities, the 
Scottish Executive has established a monitoring regime to collect information from all access 
authorities on their progress and expenditure. The data received is compiled into a 
database for analysis, and to give information at a national level. 

The questions in the monitoring regime are divided into three sections, relating to general 
questions about access functions, the use of statutory powers, and expenditure. Data from 
the first two rounds of monitoring, which cover activity between commencement of the Act on 
9 February 2005 to 31 March 2006, is available here. 

A summary of the data is as follows: 

PROGRESS AND POWERS - 9 FEBRUARY 2005 to 31 MARCH 2006 

There were 192 local access forum meetings across Scotland. 

The estimated length of paths signposted or waymarked was 17,349 km. 

There were 43 section 11 exemption Orders for under 6 days. The most common reason for 
these was for car rallies. 

There was 1 approved section 11 Exemption Order for more than 6 days, at Balado Activity 
Centre. 

There were 3 section 14 notices issued to remove obstructions. One of these notices lead 
to action by the local authority to remove the obstruction where £10,038 was recovered from 
the land manager. 

There were 19 new path agreements. 


EXPENDITURE - 1 APRIL 2005 TO 31 MARCH 2006 

Expenditure on path capital works was £5.8m with £6.4m match-funding. 

Expenditure on path maintenance works was £8.7m. 

The number of access officers working for access authorities in Scotland was 68 full-time 
equivalents with a salary cost of £2.0m. The full-time equivalents of rangers working for 
access authorities was 208. 

The total cost of running local access forums was £40,000. 

The expenditure publicising the Scottish Outdoor Access Code was £129,000. 

Other expenditure was £756,000. 

The total expenditure, not including match-funding, was £17.4m.