The Scottish Government

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 four rounds of monitoring, which cover activity between the commencement of the Act on February 9, 2005 to March 31, 2007, is available.

• Data from first four monitoring rounds
• Explanatory notes

A summary of the data is as follows:

PROGRESS AND POWERS - FEBRUARY 9, 2005 to MARCH 31, 2007

There were 369 local access forum meetings across Scotland.

The estimated total length of paths signposted or waymarked was 18,573 km as of 31/3/7.

There were 88 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 6 days or more, at Balado Activity Centre.

There were 12 section 14 notices issued to remove obstructions.

There were 29 new path agreements.

There were 3 summary applications served on access authorities where cases proceeded to judicial determination under section 28 of the Act.

EXPENDITURE - APRIL 1, 2005 TO MARCH 31, 2007

Expenditure on path capital works was £12.6m with £13.0m match-funding.

Expenditure on path maintenance works was £10.6m.

The number of access officers working for access authorities in Scotland was 67 full-time equivalents with a salary cost of £4.1m. Full-time equivalents of rangers working for access authorities was 208.

The total cost of running local access forums was £89,000.

The expenditure publicising the Scottish Outdoor Access Code was £266,000.

Other expenditure was £3.6m.

The total expenditure, not including match-funding, was £31.4m.