Hill tracks and prior notification in Scotland

Hill track prior notification scotland is a short procedure with a long tail. Since 2014, forming or altering a private way under agricultural or forestry permitted development rights in Scotland has required prior notification to the planning authority, which then has 28 days to say whether its approval of the siting, design and external appearance is needed. Before that change, estate tracks went in without anybody being told. This article covers Scotland only. The English and Welsh permitted development orders work differently and do not apply here.

The procedure does not ask whether the track should exist. It asks what it should look like and where it should go.

What the notification regime covers

Agricultural and forestry permitted development in Scotland sits in the General Permitted Development (Scotland) Order 1992, as amended. Forming a private way serving an agricultural unit, or a way required for forestry purposes, falls within those rights provided the usual conditions are met, including that the development is reasonably necessary for the purposes of agriculture or forestry on that land.

What the 2014 amendment added was a notification step. The developer tells the planning authority before starting, with a description and a plan, and the authority decides whether to require prior approval of siting, design and external appearance. If it does not respond within the period, the work can proceed in accordance with what was notified.

So the right itself is unchanged. The authority gained a window in which to influence how the right is exercised, which in landscape terms is most of what matters.

Which tracks fall within it

Three questions decide whether you are inside the regime.

Is the way private, serving the agricultural or forestry unit rather than the public? A way intended for public use, or for a commercial purpose such as a wind farm access or a visitor route, is not covered and needs planning permission.

Is it reasonably necessary for agriculture or forestry on that unit? A track to a shooting butt, a hill path for sporting access, or a route primarily serving recreation does not meet that test, and tracks built for sporting purposes under an agricultural label are the most common source of enforcement cases.

Does the land carry restrictions? Permitted development rights are modified or removed in National Parks, and National Scenic Areas and other designations affect what the authority will accept. Check the designation before assuming the right applies at all.

Alterations count as well as new formation. Widening an existing track, raising it, or resurfacing it in a materially different way can bring it within the notification requirement.

The information to submit

The notification is short, and a thin notification invites a prior approval requirement that a fuller one might have avoided.

• a written description of the proposed development, including length, width and construction
• a plan at a scale that shows the route against contours, watercourses and existing tracks
• details of siting, design and external appearance, including surfacing material and colour
• the drainage arrangement, including cross-drain positions and outfalls
• cut and fill, batter angles and how spoil and borrow material will be handled
• the restoration proposals for any temporary works and borrow pits

Photographs along the proposed line, taken from the public viewpoints where the track will be seen, do more to settle a landscape concern than any amount of text. Include them even though nothing requires you to.

The authority's response and its limits

The authority has 28 days from receipt to notify you whether prior approval is required. Two outcomes follow.

If approval is not required, you can build what you notified. Build something different and you are outside the permitted development right, which means you have carried out development without permission.

If approval is required, you apply for it, and the authority considers siting, design and external appearance. That is the whole scope. The authority cannot use the process to refuse the track in principle, and it cannot impose conditions about matters outside those three headings. In practice the useful levers are the alignment, the surfacing material, the batter treatment and the drainage, all of which sit comfortably inside design and siting.

Where the scheme falls outside permitted development and a full application becomes necessary, the application route and the consultation requirements follow from the categorisation set out in the hierarchy of developments in Scotland. Applications in some designated areas may also engage the referral arrangements described in notification of planning applications to Scottish Ministers.

Restoration and reinstatement

The permitted development right carries a restoration expectation where the agricultural or forestry purpose ceases within the relevant period, and borrow pits and temporary compounds attract their own reinstatement requirements.

Restoration on peat and on carbon-rich soils is the hard case. A track cut into deep peat drains the surrounding ground, and the hydrological effect extends well beyond the visible scar. Floating construction over a geotextile raft, with no excavation and no interruption of surface flow, is the approach that avoids the problem, and it is usually what an authority will push for on peatland. It costs more per metre and it is far easier to defend.

Reinstatement of a cut track is close to impossible to do convincingly. Replacing the turf over a compacted formation produces a line visible for decades. Plan the alignment so you do not need to reinstate it.

Enforcement where notification was skipped

Building without notifying means the development was not permitted development, so it was unauthorised. The authority can serve an enforcement notice under the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997, and the time limits in that Act apply, with the shorter period running for operational development.

Enforcement outcomes on hill tracks tend to be one of three things: a requirement to apply retrospectively, a requirement to carry out specific remedial works to alignment, drainage and surfacing, or a requirement to remove and restore. The middle outcome is the common one, and it is more expensive than doing the work properly in the first place because the remediation has to undo as well as rebuild.

There is a separate exposure worth naming. Works affecting a watercourse need authorisation from the environmental regulator under the controlled activities regime, independently of planning. A culvert put in without that authorisation is a separate breach, and an enforcement investigation into one usually surfaces the other.

Practical advice for estates

The estates that avoid trouble do four things.

1. Notify every time, even where the argument for exemption looks strong, because the cost of notification is a fortnight and the cost of being wrong is remediation.
2. Design the alignment to the ground rather than to the map, following contours, keeping off skylines and crossing watercourses at right angles at stable points.
3. Specify the surfacing to blend with local rock and soil colour, and source material locally where that is possible, since a pale imported aggregate is the single most visible mistake.
4. Keep a record of what was notified, what was approved and what was built, with dated photographs, because an enforcement query 5 years later is answered by the file or not at all.

Illustrative example. A 900 metre extension to an existing farm track on a hill unit, crossing 120 metres of blanket peat and one small burn. The notification that goes through without a prior approval requirement includes a floated construction detail across the peat, a clear-span crossing of the burn, cross-drains at stated intervals, local aggregate and photographs from the public road 2 km away. The notification that attracts a prior approval requirement says 900 metres of new access track with a hand-drawn line on an Ordnance Survey extract.

PlanScope drafts a Landscape Strategy, a Planning Statement and a Drainage Strategy from your project answers, and you can browse the full set of 66 report types before you start. The drafting is grounded in English national policy and English local plans, so a Scottish proposal needs the reviewer to check National Planning Framework 4, the local development plan and Scottish procedure against the draft. This is general guidance, not legal advice; confirm the current statutory position with the planning authority before relying on it.

PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.