UKH

The Scottish Government have opened another public consultation on further amendments to the Scottish Land Reform Act, from which the Scottish Access Code draws it's authority.

https://consult.gov.scot/agriculture-and-rural-economy/land-reform-net-zero...

At the last amendment of the act, in 2016, we were told by the Scottish Government that they detected no demand for improvements to public access legislation, despite the glaring, coach and horses size, holes in Scottish Rights of Way legislation. These problems have been well rehearsed on loads of threads on here.

The Access Code allows land managers to shut areas of land for unspecified "management" reasons without notice and this is happening at increasing frequency. Shooting and forestry Estates, in particular, are taking that attitude. These tactics are often accompanied by a simple flat refusal to admit the existence of Core Paths, Rights of Way or permissive paths for which the Estate has been paid to provide by the public purse.

The "Core Paths" legislation, in particular, has turned out to be a bad joke. The main problem compared with England and Wales is the lack of legally accepted public maps of ancient Rights of Way and publicly subsidised permissive paths.

The route to producing a public, legally enforceable, map for Scotland would be to amend the “Core Paths” section of the 2003 Land Reform and Access Act to include all the routes in the National Catalogue of Rights of Way and all publicly subsidised permissive paths, and then require Ordnance Survey to publish as a duty (as the 1949 Act requires for England).

In this latest Consultation most of the questions are about land ownership and land taxation. Everyone probably has an opinion about the heavily subsidised upper classes evading tax, but Andy Wightman's blog has some reasoned argument. (https://andywightman.scot/archives/4845).

We don't need to answer every question in the Consultation. There is no direct request for Access opinions (they are trying to avoid the subject), but there are two open ended questions. Section 8 of the Consultation covers , "New conditions on those in receipt of public funding for land based activity". Question 28 is a free form box. I would have thought that any Estate in receipt of public subsidy should be able to demonstrate a high degree of compliance with the Scottish Access Code. Question 44 in section 12 is an open ended "Do you have any additional ideas or proposals for Land Reform in Scotland? "

If you have had any disconcerting access experiences in Scotland in the last 20 years please tell the Scottish Government that the current set up isn't working. If you live in Scotland tell your MSP. If you live elsewhere tell the MSP for the area where your trouble happened. You can trace MSP's on here; https://www.parliament.scot/msps .

If you are a member of MCofS, Ramblers Scotland or Scotways please badger them into responding to the Consultation instead of sitting on their hands like they did in 2016. If you don't ask you don't get.

My experience is that it mostly is working and the few issues I've had have been quickly resolved either through personal discussion with the land manager or involving the local access officer.

That is also my experience. However, I do believe that we need to be constantly vigilant to avoid landowners undertaking actions to restrict access. We know there are some landowners who would be more than happy to restrict or remove access rights to their land, and some are using questionable tactics to put people off exercising their rights. For example, one of my local estates, notoriously unfriendly towards runners and mountain bikers, has taken to flying a red flag at the main access point, with a prominent sign to the effect that deer stalking happens all year round except on Tuesdays - all despite the fact that stalking should not take take place for more than 1/3 of the year, or on Sundays, and the estate does not advertise deer stalking as an activity, restricting its activities to 'grouse, blue hares, snipe, duck, and pheasants'. 

Access rights in Scotland should be actively protected, and errant landowners must be aware that their actions will be scrutinised and challenged where necessary. 

It's always nice to hear that somebody has had a good experience.

My experience is that I have been verbally abused, had stones thrown at me, been threatened, lied to, physically obstructed and intimidated. I have seen vehicles, boats and waymarking signs vandalized all over Scotland. I have had an actual Dowager Duchess set a dog on me when I was in charge of a group of kids (she was repeatedly shouting "Access doesn't apply here"). I have lost count of the times that I have had "you can't come through here" while on a Right of Way. I have seen many ancient paths vanish through lack of use because they aren't on OS maps. If a "right" is not legally enforceable it is not a right. I have reported incidents to Access Officers over a dozen times and direct to the Polis a couple of times but never had a satisfactory resolution. I have lost my sense of amusement at having a gun waved at me by a shouty man.

The last one I had was a red faced crackpot repeatedly bellowing "That's not public!" at me. Not only were we on a Right of Way and Core Path but the track wasn't on his land, it is an access track belonging to my ex-employer.

The current law is a vague mess and it needs clarifying.

I don’t think the law is a mess.  The law is clear rights of way cannot be closed under the Land-reform Act temporary closure for management purposes clause, they can only be legally closed by a Traffic Order sought from the Local Authority.

As you point out it is the lack of a clear and readily available database/maps detailing rights of way are that allow landowners to get away with it……I suspect many landowners don’t even know they have a right of way on thier land.

WRT Land reform I just encounter low level attempts to corrupt the act; false or  blatantly wrong signs reinterpreting the act, prevention of parking and locking gates ect.

In general the nearer you get to the central belt the worse it is.

Sounds to me like you're unlucky. 

Very true, but it's worth noting that Scotways are doing a tremendous amount of little-seen work here behind the scenes in a number of ways. Well worth learning about what they do https://scotways.com/crow/ and supporting them!

The Ferret news website has published a report about Scottish land access;

https://theferret.scot/locked-gates-keep-out-signs-hundreds-access-issues/c...