Strengthening Responsible Access: 20 Years of the Scottish Outdoor Access Code

By Luke Triscott, Countryside Ranger, West Lothian Council

2025 marked twenty years of the Scottish Outdoor Access Code (SOAC), the guidance that underpins how the public and land managers navigate Scotland’s unique access rights. The anniversary provided an opportunity to take stock of how well responsible access is promoted and understood, and to reflect on the role of Ranger Services in supporting that understanding.

For West Lothian Council’s Ranger Service, statutory access duties sit at the core of our work. As local authority needs and budgets have shifted over the years, our team has continued to adapt—balancing practical site management with a strong emphasis on education and engagement. With support from NatureScot, we were able to expand this work in 2025 by improving the materials we use to deliver SOAC messaging and extending our engagement with schools and community groups. For us, this investment isn’t just about delivering lessons; it’s about highlighting the role of the Ranger Service, promoting positive behaviours to all ages, protecting parks and greenspaces, and helping people connect with nature safely and confidently.

Investing in Better Engagement Tools

NatureScot’s SOAC anniversary funding enabled organisations across Scotland to develop resources to raise awareness of access rights and responsibilities. For our team, this funding meant the chance to replace single use and paper-based props with durable, field-ready tools designed for repeated use both indoors and outdoors.

These new materials immediately improved the quality of our workshops. Our interactive SOAC-themed games—long a mainstay of our engagement work—benefited most. The sturdier kit allows us to run activities more smoothly, makes setup quicker, and stands up to heavy use during the school term and the busy summer season. These games now form the backbone of our education offer, helping us convey key SOAC principles in ways that are accessible, practical, and memorable.

Engaging Schools Across West Lothian

Between Easter and the start of the summer holidays, we invited every primary school in West Lothian giving them the opportunity to book a dedicated SOAC session for their P6 or P7 pupils. These year groups consistently prove to be an ideal audience: pupils are developing independence, beginning to explore the outdoors without constant supervision, and are already making decisions that relate directly to the Code.

Fifteen schools took up the offer, allowing us to work with 375 pupils. Each workshop followed a familiar structure: an indoor introduction to SOAC, followed by outdoor activities in school grounds or nearby greenspaces. Indoors, we focused on the Code’s three key principles—respecting others, caring for the environment, and taking responsibility for your own actions—connecting them to behavioural expectations that pupils have to meet in a school environment. Themes of respect, responsibility and shared spaces emerged naturally. This helps ground SOAC in their everyday experience rather than presenting it as something separate or abstract.

Outside, the learning becomes hands-on. Using our scenario-based games, pupils explored real-world decision-making around issues like field margins and access points, low-impact camping, and responsible dog walking. Engagement was consistently high, with pupils often eager to share stories from their own time outdoors—both positive experiences and examples of conflict or confusion. For pupils from more urban schools, introductory concepts such as livestock, managed landscapes, or even the term “countryside” needed a bit more unpacking, and the practical activities helped bridge that gap.

A key success was the number of pupils who left the workshops confident enough to explain SOAC back to us—even for those encountering it for the first time. Early awareness helps set expectations for behaviour long before these young people begin exploring the outdoors independently, and we see that as an important long-term investment in protecting our sites.

Bringing SOAC to Life in Country Parks

With the school programme complete for the year, our focus shifted to wider public engagement through our “Wild Wednesday” summer events. This year, each event celebrated SOAC’s twentieth anniversary and took place at one of West Lothian’s three Country Parks: Beecraigs, Almondell & Calderwood, and Polkemmet.

At each event, the Ranger team staffed a gazebo with table top displays, featuring posters, leaflets and volunteer information, alongside our interactive SOAC games used in our workshops, set up as stations with instructions so they can be self-led. The games proved popular with families, enabling adults and children to explore the various scenarios together and to open up discussion on what is responsible behaviour in a non-instructional, hands-on way.

Across the three events, we spoke directly with more than 300 visitors. Discussions ranged from straightforward questions about shared paths, dog control, and recreational pressures, to more detailed conversations about access rights in working landscapes. Having these discussions in-situ—surrounded by woodlands, multi-use trails, and active recreation activity —helps illustrate how the Code functions in practice.

Working in Partnership

Much of our access work is strengthened by long-standing partnerships with other organisations. Because responsible access intersects with so many issues—from fire prevention to biodiversity—collaborative engagement ensures consistent messaging and a more joined-up visitor experience.

At this year’s summer events we were joined by several partners:

• Scottish Fire and Rescue Service shared advice on preventing wildfires and staying safe during prolonged dry spells
• Police Scotland provided messaging around respectful behaviour in shared spaces and tackling anti-social behaviour
• Buglife delivered mini-beast activities and discussed how access decisions can support pollinator conservation
• Polkemmet Beekeeping Association offered insights into their local colonies and the importance of pollinators in healthy ecosystems

   
These partnerships give our events additional depth and credibility, showing visitors that responsible access is a shared priority across multiple agencies, not just something “the Rangers say”.

Outcomes and Reflections

Across both school and community settings, interest in understanding how access rights work in practice remained high. Many people arrived with only the idea of a general “right to roam”; by the end of a conversation or activity, they recognised the balance of rights and responsibilities that makes Scotland’s system work.

From our perspective, several key lessons stood out:

• Durable, interactive resources significantly increase the effectiveness and lifespan of SOAC education tools
• Linking SOAC principles to existing behavioural frameworks, such as school charters, makes the content more familiar and easier to grasp
• Delivering outdoors wherever possible helps people link discussions to real landscapes and situations
• Partnership working widens our reach and reinforces that responsible access is a multi-agency effort
• A friendly, conversational tone encourages engagement more than rule-focused approaches

   
As countryside professionals, we are all navigating shifting patterns of outdoor use, new recreational pressures, and changing expectations from the public. Sharing examples like these helps us collectively refine how we engage people with access rights and responsibilities.

Twenty years on, the need remains clear: helping people of all ages understand their role in caring for Scotland’s outdoors is essential to keeping our access system strong. Ranger Services, local authorities, conservation charities, and land managers all play a part—and by working together, we can continue to champion responsible access for the next twenty years and beyond.

Find out more about the Ranger service on www.westlothian.gov.uk/ranger-service or via email

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