What is this about?
To improve access opportunities and the upkeep of access areas on land and inland water, through the creation and upgrading of paths and routes, provision of facilities and amenities, land management measures, and monitoring of access use.
What will this achieve?
This will encourage responsible public outdoor access and will help to integrate access with rural land management. This will generate wide ranging benefits for people, helping them to enjoy the outdoors and promoting physical activity and health. The access facilities will be a sustainable resource, for use by nearby communities, visitors, and by enterprises in the locality, and will generate broad social and economic benefits. The facilities will also create the conditions for better development and management of outdoor access and recreation opportunities.
What you can do
You can do one or more of the following activities in your proposal:
- Path/route construction, upgrading and associated works. This can include path surfacing, drainage, gates, bridges, steps, boardwalks, including provisions for particular user groups such as horse riders, water based use, and all abilities.
- Vegetation reduction to enable access. This can include mowing, brashing, high pruning as appropriate to the site.
- Provision of amenities car parking areas, seats, picnic tables, hard standings and dog exercise areas close to arrival points.
- Provision of safety features if required to facilitate access to viewpoints, water margins and well used areas. This can include handrails, lifebelts and signs.
- Near to communities manage fields and/or areas to integrate access and informal recreational use with productive use. This can include the installation of gates, access points and link paths providing access to the community.
- Responsible access for sensitive areas. This can include paths that guide people away from sensitive habitats or species and the construction of hides, etc.
- Monitoring. This can include operation of people-counters, normally automated sensors/counters placed under or beside a path, which detect and log the number of people using that path. Surveys and other similar means to monitor levels and characteristics of public use, as an aid to management planning.
- Signage - signposts, fingerposts, waymarkers and information boards.
- Associated provision of information leaflets.
Who can apply?
This Option is available to all rural land managers, community groups and non-profit organisations in all areas of Scotland, that own or occupy land. Priority will be given to applicants who:
- increase the amount and quality of paths and routes in and around communities, or at locations which experience, or have potential for, significant visitor use
- increase the amount and quality of paths and routes between communities
- increase the amount and quality of paths and routes to, through and along places of interest
- improve the integration between access and rural land management
- assist the suitable implementation and monitoring of core paths
- achieve improvements for multi-use paths, and for specific user groups, including horse riders, all-abilities, canoeists and cyclists
- demonstrate liaison with the local access authority, to help co-ordinate with local access priorities
When planning your project, you are strongly advised to contact your local authority or National Park authority, access officer to seek their advice. This will be in your interests so that you can demonstrate a good fit with any other existing or proposed access measures and local path networks.
Eligibility criteria
All of your activities must meet the minimum specifications and the requirements of the technical specification.
You need to ensure that you comply at all times with the Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions (GAEC) that apply to all your land.
With your application, you must submit a 1:10,000 scale map showing the detail of your project including the location of your path/route and the location and type of capital items in your proposal. You must provide a copy of this map to your local authority or national park authority access officer, prior to submitting your application. With your application you must enclose written evidence from your local authority or national park authority that they have received the map. The information in the map may be used as the basis for public information on access opportunities in the area.
As part of your application, confirm in writing that no other funding mechanism, organisation or individual is enhancing or maintaining any of the paths or facilities identified in your proposal.
Tarmac/bitumen surfaced motor-vehicle tracks are ineligible for any works under this Option.
Any bridge capital item under this measure is only eligible where the bridge is of a type which is not designed for motorised vehicle use, other than one which has been constructed or adapted for use by a person who has a disability and which will be used by such a person. The bridge must be for members of the public exercising their rights under Part 1 of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 and must link two or more paths or routes together and cannot be used for vehicle infra-structure purposes.
Path creation and Options available under this measure cannot be supported for access provision purposes through other measures in the Scotland Rural Development Programme including:
- Provision or improvements of roads, bridges, culverts, gates; or formation or improvement of access track to land improvement areas as part of the Crofting Counties Agricultural Grants Scheme
- Provision and upgrading of infrastructure related to access to farm and forest land, energy supplies and water management
- Access creation for sustainable forest management
- Livestock tracks, gates and river crossing
- Sustainable management of forests and woodlands
- Woods in and around towns challenge fund
- Support for diversification outwith agriculture
- Support for the development and creation of micro-enterprises
- Provision, development or upgrading of small scale tourist facilities by land managers
- Information and awareness raising
- Improving access
- Forests for people challenge fund
- Provisions of leisure, recreation, sporting, catering and other rural community services and facilities
Rate of Support
This is a five year commitment. We will pay up to 75% of the actual cost per capital item.
This means that applicants are eligible for up to 75% of the actual costs of the activities associated with this option in the form of actual capital items. For example, if an applicant was constructing a new path, in addition to the required evidence and documents, the applicant should also provide a list of actual costs for capital items that they wish to apply to undertake that year. These could include, but are not limited to, actual costs for the labour of laying the path, hard core, transport costs for materials, a gate, labour for erecting a gate, vegetation removal labour costs, vegetation removal material costs, each relevant drainage item and the labour for installing that item.
There is no limit to the number of capital items that a beneficiary applies for in any one year and an applicant can apply for different capital items every year. Beneficiaries are only expected to apply for more than one path in any year where the proposed paths are completely separate or where they are broken naturally by a feature like a railway line or river. Paths cannot be artificially broken into sections in order to secure payment. Beneficiaries should consider their regional priorities before applying as there is no guarantee that their proposal will be successful or that they will be offered the full 75% for each of the items they have applied for.
To ensure value for money we require you to provide 2 competitive quotes for any capital items applied for which are based on actual cost. If, however, you are seeking grant support towards something so specialised it is only available through 1 source then we would accept 1 quote. Please see the guidance on quotes and estimates for more information.
Inspection/verification
Will be subject to inspection and verification by staff, normally Area Office staff of the Scottish Government Rural Payments and Inspections Directorate (SGRPID).
Application appraisal inspection:
- An appraisal inspection will only be needed if there are any doubts about technical aspects of an application. During any inspection appropriate photographic evidence must be obtained.
Claims inspections:
- At least 5% of all claims will be selected using risk analysis. These inspections will be mandatory but Area Offices may choose other cases if there is any doubt about the details of a claim. These inspections may take place at any time.
- The inspection will consist of 2 parts:
An examination of the works to ensure that they are as set out in the approval and are technically sound and that the claimed costs are justified.
A wider technical farm inspection to ensure that the standards of Cross Compliance are being complied with. During any inspection appropriate photographic evidence must be obtained.
You must have your original 1:10,000 scale map to hand and make it available for inspection, showing the location of your project and identifying the location of the path/route, area or facility, also showing the location and the type of path capital items claimed for.
You must retain any supporting documentation and receipts for costs incurred for inspection purposes. You must also keep records showing all the relevant biosecurity and health and safety requirements that have been undertaken.
Minimum Technical Specifications
You may wish to develop an access plan as part of your proposal. The expertise of your local access group may be able to assist you in undertaking an access audit of your project.
If you are applying for funding for new features you may wish to undertake a risk assessment first and this should be undertaken according to COSHH requirements. Where a risk assessment is required this is indentified in the minimum technical specification.
There are two Disability Discrimination Acts 1995 and 2005 which make it unlawful for the providers of goods, facilities and services (and certain other bodies) to discriminate against anyone on the grounds of their disability. The Acts require that reasonable adjustments should be made where a service provider has a practice, policy or procedure or there is a physical feature that makes it impossible or unreasonably difficult for disabled people to make use of the service, the Disability Rights Commission's Code of Practice (2002) gives some helpful guidance.
All of the following activities are eligible and can be combined in any combination of ways.
List of useful internet guidance
Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition (GAEC).
PEPFAA code (Prevention of Environmental Pollution from Agricultural Activity).
To find your local authority or national park authority access officer go to www.outdooraccess-scotland.com and click on the map for Access Contact which is on the home page. You can also find out more about the Scottish Outdoor Access Code on the website.
The following sources may contain further information about path enhancement, management and technical information on capital items.
Information on how to provide enhanced access for people with disabilities is available in "BT Countryside for All" which is available from the Fieldfare Trust ( www.fieldfare.org.uk).
Information on path management is available on "Lowland Path Construction Guide" from the Paths for All Partnership www.pathsforall.org.uk or about "Upland Path Management" from SNH.
Information on item designs and structures can be found in the Countryside Access Design Guide http://www.snh.org.uk/publications/on-line/accessguide
Information on signposts and bridges is available in "Signpost Guidance" available from the Paths for All Partnership www.pathsforall.org.uk
If you need help in developing interpretation boards, panels, there are a number of items which can assist you:
"Environmental Interpretation - A Practical Guide for People with Big Ideas and Small Budgets" by Sam H Ham, Published by Fulcrum Publishing (1992) ISBN 1555919022
"A Sense of Place", an interpretive planning handbook by J Carter is available on line www.scotinterpnet.org.uk
risk assessment - you can find further information on how to carry out a risk assessment at http://www.hse.gov.uk/risk/fivesteps.htm