A wealthy laird stands accused of restricting public access to his Scottish estate by imposing car parking charges to manage demand.
Robbie Douglas-Miller owns the 4,200-acre Hopes Estate in East Lothian where his parking spaces at the end of a 1.5-mile, single-track road are a magnet for walkers who want a less arduous climb into the Lammermuir Hills.
Douglas-Miller, who once ran Edinburgh’s Jenners department store, said that the free car park was being overwhelmed by more than 100 cars a day during the pandemic, with carelessly parked vehicles damaging grass verges and blocking estate gates.
From next week he will limit parkers to those who pay £5 for a monthly permit that they will have to collect from a nearby post office. Those who are caught without a permit will be reported to the police.
The car park will open four days a week and estate managers have placed obstacles on the verges to stop drivers leaving vehicles beside the public road from Longyester, near Gifford.
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Hillwalking organisations say Hopes Reservoir and Lammer Law near by are major attractions and visits are important to health and wellbeing as well as the local economy. Ramblers Scotland, which has reported the estate to the local council, says the car park is “the only realistic access point to this area for most visitors”.
The estate’s Facebook page has been inundated by posts from “disappointed” walkers who say the move amounts to closure of the estate for almost half of the week “by stealth”.
The dispute foreshadows a likely battle between the public and landowners in many parts of Scotland who expect to be inundated by visitors when travel restrictions end.
The estate said in November that its free 20-space car park had been extremely busy, with use swelling from about ten cars a day to more than 150. Some drivers had parked their cars on grass verges and blocked gateways and passing places. There was also increased littering.
The estate said that over the winter it would redesign the car park and reopen it in April on a permit basis, with income going to charity. The decision prompted highly critical online comments.
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“Really saddened by your decision to only open the car park between 0900-1800 on a Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday,” wrote Glenda Linton. “These limited days/hours of opening are very disappointing to responsible people who have regularly visited the Hopes by car for decades.”
One Facebook critic wrote: “The gatekeeping of Scotland’s countryside in this manner is out of order.” Another commented: “Let’s call this what it is, a mean attempt to roll back our much-valued right to access land in Scotland. The threat of the police [and] the closure three days a week and after 6pm, all show this is about restriction of access.”
Brendan Paddy, director of Ramblers Scotland, said: “We aren’t opposed to modest parking charges at popular spots like the Hopes Estate as long as the money raised is invested in much-needed facilities like paths, signage and car parks. However, by introducing cumbersome local permits that allow only nine hours of parking on just four days of the week the estate is restricting public access by the backdoor.”
The estate is not backing down. Douglas-Miller, who was managing director of Jenners when the 170-year-old family business was sold to House of Fraser for £46 million in 2005, said: “The issues at the Hopes were symptomatic of those experienced around the UK. In most cases, local areas were simply unable to cope with the volume of people wishing to take a break from the restrictions and the subsequent need to clear up rubbish afterwards.
“We had the additional problems associated with single-track access, safety and our commercial activities being interrupted.”
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East Lothian council said: “The car park is on private land so we can’t order the landowner to open it up. It is their lives and livelihoods that are affected.”