Dear East Ayrshire Council,

Please provide the following data in spreadsheet form for each financial year from 2016/17 to 2022/23*, inclusive. (*For 2022/23, please specify whether any figures are projected, or likely to change before 31 March 2023).

Please break down the results for each question by year and provide any explanatory commentary where you consider this necessary/helpful.

1) How many Full Time Equivalent (FTE) Access Officers, AND/OR officers delivering outdoor access-related duties (other than Rangers*), regardless of job title, your authority employed. (*There is a separate question on Rangers, below.)

When assessing FTE, please only include time spent specifically on access work, including delivering the authority’s statutory access duties (under Part I of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003), or on promotion of the Scottish Outdoor Access Code and responsible behaviour, etc.

For each individual post included in the above assessment, please specify whether the post is purely access-related or whether it encompasses multiple roles with access as only one element of a broader remit (e.g. Woodland Officer, Parks Management, etc). When an officer's role is not purely access-related, please provide an estimate of the proportion of time each individual spends on access-related work (e.g. 25%, 50%, etc).

2) How many FTE Rangers you employed. Please give an estimate of percentage time spent on access and visitor management per financial year by your Ranger Service as a whole. 'Access and visitor management' work would include, for example, maintenance, upgrading, monitoring and signage of the paths network, as well as promoting responsible behaviour and educating the public about access rights and responsibilities.

3) The overall annual spend on access work for each year (excluding staff costs), giving separate figures for capital and revenue. (This should include spend on upgrading, maintaining, monitoring and creating paths; replacing/installing path furniture, including signage; promotion of responsible behaviour; development and survey work outsourced to third parties.

4) Where relevant, please provide an overall figure for the period in question (1/4/16 - 31/3/23) for any external legal costs (e.g., from court cases) associated with upholding access rights.

Thanks,

Jamie Mann