Judges uphold right to roam on Loch Lomond park estate

RAMBLERS have welcomed a landmark legal appeal upholding public access rights at an estate within Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park.

The Lord President of the Court of Session, sitting with two other judges, found in favour of the national park’s argument that the owner of Drumlean Estate, near Aberfoyle, was unlawfully blocking members of the public from enjoying access rights.

Following complaints from members of the public that access to an area between Ben Venue and Loch Ard was being blocked by locked high gates, and after repeated attempts to resolve the issue with the owners directly, Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Authority issued an enforcement notice to the landowners to remove a number of physical barriers in 2013.

The initial judgement in late 2015 found against the park authority and held that there had not been a breach of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, and that access rights did not apply to certain parts of the estate.

The park authority immediately lodged an appeal against that decision which, it said, if it had been allowed to stand, would have undermined the Act and set an ‘unhelpful’ legal precedent for access rights in Scotland. That appeal was upheld in March 2017, but a further appeal to the Court of Session was lodged by the landowner, which was rejected in the judgement issued last week.

Gordon Watson, chief executive of the park, said it ‘strongly believes in its duty to uphold the landmark right to responsible access granted to the public by the Act.

‘The vast majority of landowners within the national park, from small land holdings to large estates, respect the provisions and responsibilities that come with the Act and support our many projects to improve access.

‘There has been a significant amount of work over the past five years involved in pursuing this case but it was crucial to do so and ensure the public can continue to enjoy their access rights within this special landscape in the national park.

‘This decision sets a national precedent and we are pleased that this positive result will be able to be drawn upon by other access authorities across the country in the future.’

Jess Dolan, director of Ramblers Scotland, said the ‘excellent’ ruling ‘finally brings to an end the landowner’s long-running and unwise attempts to stop people accessing the beautiful Drumlean Estate’.