Court ruling sparks public right of way fears

21 June 2007

There were fears in Scotland this week that a court ruling would encourage landowners to seek legal backing for making significant tracts of land exempt from a statutory right of access.
Perth & Kinross Council and the Ramblers’ Association were disappointed the sheriff ruled that the ‘nature and prominence’ of Stagecoach founder Ann Gloag’s house meant she required a large section of private land to ensure her privacy.
They believed the sheriff’s judgement did not reflect the intentions of the Scottish Parliament in passing the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, and took little account of the Scottish Outdoor Access Code.
Former deputy environment minister, Lewis Macdonald, said the law would ensure ‘that our landscape is not only for the exclusive use of a few, but for the whole community to enjoy’. The access code, meanwhile, said that only ‘sufficient adjacent land’ to a house – normally only a private garden – should be exempt.
But the sheriff ruled that the nature of Gloag’s house ‘would point to a larger, rather than smaller area of ground being required [as sufficient adjacent land]’.
Her house ‘is one of the larger country mansion houses in Perthshire and indeed, probably in Scotland. It is of a very substantial value, such that only a small number of persons would be able to afford to own it and run it as a private house’.
Gloag won a so-called ‘declarator’ that 12 acres of land around her house, Kinfauns Castle, near Perth, including a significant tract of native woodland, was exempt from the general right of the public to access land.
Helen Todd, access campaign officer at the Ramblers’ Association Scotland, said the sheriff ‘was wrong to focus on who is living in the house’. Walkers were ‘not banned from Balmoral on security grounds’, she stressed.
The association feared that further landowners would be encouraged to seek ‘declarators’ and to obstruct public access. Gloag won the case after she erected a seven-foot-high, one mile-long fence around 12 acres.
The Ramblers Association and Perth & Kinross Council have until next month to lodge an appeal against the decision.

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Court ruling sparks public right of way fears

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