Scotland's New National Park Appraisal Panel: final report

Appraisal panel role and purpose

The core team has appraised all five new National Park nominations in full, with input from the expert appraisal team. The expert appraisal team was invited to consider specific aspects of each nomination relevant to their area of expertise. Appendix 1 sets out the Terms of Reference of the appraisal panel.

Based on the outcome of this appraisal process, the Panel’s role is to provide advice to Ministers (in the form of this appraisal report) on the extent to which nominated areas meet each of the criteria and could therefore be considered for designation as new National Parks. This advice will support Scottish Ministers in determining which area or areas should go forward to the statutory reporter investigation phase as ‘National Park Proposal(s)’. It is not the purpose of the Panel to make a decision on which nominated area, or areas, should be selected as ‘National Park Proposals’ or designated as a National Park.

The advice of the appraisal panel is based on the panel’s assessment of the nominations against the criteria in the appraisal framework. Where annexes were provided by nominating groups, the information within them was only considered where it directly and specifically supported information within the nomination. (e.g. data from local community engagement surveys).

The appraisal panel also took account of supplementary analysis of relevant publicly available datasets when preparing this report. This supplementary analysis relates to the areas proposed in the five nominations (including size, population ranges, statutory and non-statutory designated sites relating to natural and cultural heritage, Annex I and priority habitat types, woodland cover and expansion potential, peatland coverage and condition and Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation scores). This analysis was supplementary to the main appraisal process and used for context and for validating the material and commentary in the nominations. The supplementary analysis is at Appendix 2.

The appraisal panel sought no additional information from the groups that submitted the nominations. One clarification was sought from the Lochaber nominating group to check whether the marine environment around the Small Isles was included within the group’s nomination. It was confirmed by the Lochaber nominating group that the marine area around the Small Isles was not included in their nomination.

The appraisal panel was supported by a secretariat consisting of officials from Scottish Government’s Directorate for Environment and Forestry.