Ayrshire Outdoor Access Toolkit

Partnership Working in Community Consultation

The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, places a duty on all access authorities to draw up a Core Paths Plan. The aim of core paths is to provide a basic framework of routes sufficient to give the public reasonable access throughout their local area. Draft Core Paths Plans must be developed by February 2008 and must be based on extensive community consultation.

Two of the big challenges for Access Officers in developing these plans are getting as many members of the public as possible to contribute their views, and dealing with the links across local authority boundaries. North and East Ayrshire Councils decided that the best way for them to deal with this was to work together to produce the Ayrshire Outdoor Access Toolkit.

The toolkit was developed with funding support from the Scottish Natural Heritage and Paths for All Partnership (PFAP) and takes the form of a box containing:

An instruction leaflet on how to use the toolkit
Maps (1:30,000 scale for the whole of North and East Ayrshire and 1:10,000 scale for all settlements)
A copy of the SNH and PFAP Core Paths Plan Good Practice Guidance
A copy of the Scottish Outdoor Access Code
Path questionnaires
Access usage questionnaires
Two boxes of coloured pens
A CD with PDF copies of the Code, Guidance, Access Strategies, and electronic versions of the questionnaires and maps
A copy of the Executive Summary leaflet for each of the Ayrshire Authorities’ Access Strategies
Local path network leaflets

A training event was run for members of the Local Access Forum, Community Council representatives and local interest groups (cyclist, ramblers etc) and 30 toolkits were handed out. In total, 200 toolkits will be distributed. The goal is for everyone with a toolkit to take it back to their group, and members to contribute.

There are four main parts to completing the toolkit:

Identifying the routes currently used by highlighting them on the maps with the blue pens
Completing a short path questionnaire for each route identified, which gives information on the condition of each route
Identifying potential new paths and linkages using the red pens
Completing an access usage questionnaire giving information where the respondent is from, where they use paths, and what they use those paths for.

All this information is then sent back to the Access Officers, giving them a huge amount of information on which to base their Core Paths Planning. The toolkits are due to be returned by the start of September 2006, so it’s not yet known how successful the project has been. However, initial responses are positive. The project is also a great example of working in partnership and enlisting the help of members of the community in finding out what local people think.

Further information is available from:

North Ayrshire Council
www.north-ayrshire.gov.uk/corepathsplan (copies of the questionnaires used can be downloaded from here)
01294 225198

East Ayrshire Council
www.east-ayrshire.gov.uk
01563 554748