This is APRS’s Annual Report covering all our activities in our Financial Year from 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2024.

Summary

Our two key strands of work are, firstly, in working to influence policy and processes, and secondly, in supporting communities and individuals to protect their cherished local countryside and landscapes through their own campaigning and engaging with the planning system.

Our Policy Work this year can be seen in the responses, letters, reports etc we have produced which are available on our website.

Our new web-page for campaigners highlights the guidance, case studies, support and webinar recordings we have made available to help communities protect their local green spaces. In addition we offer an advice service to communities and individuals working to protect their special places.

As a very small organisation we have focused our work on three priorities this year:

• continuing with our long-running campaign for new National Parks for Scotland
• extending our deposit return campaign to working on the Circular Economy Bill and other circular economy initiatives; and
• increasing our support for communities campaigning against damaging developments in their local areas, particularly those on Green Belts.

We also focused on bringing more supporters to APRS, improving the accessibility of our website, promoting APRS’s work with new audiences though media and social media and bringing new audiences in through our webinars.

About APRS

Our Vision:

All of Scotland’s people, communities and wider society benefit from our rural landscapes and countryside and have the opportunity to be involved in enjoying, protecting and enhancing them for the benefit of future generations.

Our Mission:

APRS is Scotland’s countryside charity. We campaign to protect, enhance and promote Scotland’s countryside and rural landscapes for everyone’s benefit, and we support others to do the same.

What we Do   

• We campaign on behalf of Scotland’s countryside and rural landscapes, as central to a thriving Scotland, and vital to deal with the nature and climate crises.
• We support communities to campaign for their local countryside and landscapes by creating guidance, training, giving advice and connecting campaigners. 
• We promote the importance of Scotland’s countryside and rural landscapes for people, nature and climate
• We work in partnership with civil society and public bodies to deliver our objectives

2024 has been the first year of the delivery of ‘Taking the Long View’, our new Strategy which takes us through to 2029. The strategy encompasses the critical years for action on the climate crisis and, this year, we published our position statement on landscape, climate and energy to guide our work. 

We believe that working with landscape at the core brings out the connectedness of work across policy areas, between people and place, past and future. We have three strategic themes to our work. 

Connecting the Big Issues:

We will work on landscape issues that draw together the big issues of the day and challenge siloed thinking. We use the lens of landscape to encourage better policy making

Connecting People and Place:

We will help people from all backgrounds to connect with and value landscape and empower them to protect and enhance the landscapes and countryside where they live.

Connecting Past and Future:

We will highlight the importance of the long view in policy and planning and will use the opportunity of our centenary to convene a national conversation on Scotland’s landscapes and countryside in the next century.

Highlights for us in 2024 have been:

• Seeing Galloway proposed as the site of Scotland’s next National Park– this comes more than a decade into our campaign for new National Parks for Scotland.
• Seeing the Circular Economy Act into legislation, including some improvements we put forward.
• Fielding nearly double the amount of planning enquiries from communities and individuals through having an additional day a week of Green Belt project time
• We are particularly proud of the innovation of our Winter webinar series and the numbers of people this has brought together, and uploading and improving our guidance, case studies and videos, and making them more accessible on a specific webpage.   

Our Work in 2024

Planning and Green Belts 

This year we have focussed on providing online resources for campaigners to back up our bespoke advice to communities and individuals. This is due to an increase in demand for our expertise on planning and Green Belts and it means that we can help more people. Our webinars have been a huge success with hundreds of attendees over the series and hundreds of hours watched on our website afterwards. We had a policy success when the legal challenge of a developer over part of National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4) was rejected and a number of planning appeals were subsequently dismissed, including three that were the subject of local campaigns which we have supported. 

Winter Webinars

In 2024 we delivered the final three webinars of our first Winter Webinar Series on Planning, and the first two of our second webinar series on Biodiversity and Planning. These webinars have been delivered jointly with Planning Democracy and have been a phenomenal success with 364 sign ups for the first set of webinars, and 210 so far for the current series. All events have had between 40 and 80 attendees. As well as the intended audience of community activists, we also had attendees from local authorities, Planning Aid, the Improvement Service, as well as planning consultants. Our evaluation volunteer is quantifying the effect that our support for communities is having.

We launched the current webinar series with a stall at the LINK Parliamentary Event at Holyrood which we did jointly with Planning Democracy. It was a great success with many MSPs stopping to chat to community representatives including an extended visit from Cabinet Secretary, Gillian Martin.

Consultations 

Influencing policy requires that we are involved in responding to consultations from Government, Local Authorities and other decision-making bodies. We responded to Scottish Government consultations on: Masterplan Consent Areas – draft regulations: consultation, Amending NPF4 and Local Development Plans (LDPs), Investing in Planning and several local authority consultations as part of the development of new LDPs, which will cover 10-year plan periods. 

Planning Casework

APRS made representations or objections in a few planning cases this year. These included a battery storage facility in Cochno that would impact on core paths and an important neolithic landscape close to Faifley, and the Ryvoan phone mast application in the Cairngorms. We commented on planning cases in West Lothian, Edinburgh, North Lanarkshire and Aberdeenshire  and wrote to the Minister to ask that an application in Invergordon be called in.

Assistance given to local campaigners: Enquiries from local groups and individuals on planning issues continued to come in. Queries connected with energy, particularly transmission and battery storage, and ongoing cases for large housing developments on Green Belt sites predominated. We responded to approximately 40 requests for help on planning matters  during the year with around half of enquiries seeking help with planning applications related to electricity infrastructure or renewables (including battery storage). and just under half of enquiries related to Green Belt sites.

We visited two development projects by Stirling Developments with Planning Democracy to hear about its approach to biodiversity and local community engagement, at the start of a pilot project with the local community in Fife.

Guidance and case studies 

We focussed on creating high quality and useful resources for campaigners and activists on our website this year. We made a new Planning Advice page on our website for campaigners and activists where all the examples, guidance, and videos can sit. We wrote new guidance on Energy, Landscape and Planning and on Local Development Plans, and fully revised our APRS Advice Note on Green Belts to relate to NPF4. We wrote an in-depth analysis and case studies of the dismissal of three planning cases that resulted from national policy changes in NPF4 that we campaigned for.

Green Belt Walk

During 2024 Kat finished her walk around Glasgow’s Green Belts, which she did on weekends and days off. A blog of each walk proved to be a very useful communications tool for APRS, popular on social media and well read. Kat took the walk around Scotland with a seven-date lecture tour as part of the Royal Scottish Geographic Society’s (RSGS) ‘Inspiring People’ series.

National Parks

This year we saw our long-running campaign for new National Parks for Scotland come towards fruition. We have worked on this since 2013 alongside the Scottish Campaign for National Parks, with the joint strategy project post funded for one day a week. Significant milestones included in the first half of the year the completion of the Scottish Government’s nominations process for the location for any new National Park(s), with five areas being nominated. Then, at the end of summer 2024, following the official appraisal of bids, the Scottish Government announced that Galloway was being proposed as the next potential National Park, and would be taken forward via the statutory Reporting stage of the process leading to designation. NatureScot was appointed as official Reporter, starting the engagement and consultation process in the Autumn continuing into early 2025.

We continued to engage with NatureScot and Scottish Government over the new National Parks process and on potential changes to the  legislation, including by regularly attending the National Park Stakeholder Advisory Group. We also worked with others on aspects of National Parks, including contributing updated content on National Parks to a Scottish Environment LINK (SE LINK) report on 30 x 30. Later in the year  the SE LINK Land Use group secured funding to commission two new reports – one was on the farming benefits of National Parks and one on the social and economic benefits. Retired APRS Director,John Mayhew, was commissioned to write both of these reports which had a good reception in the media and have been cited since in many discussions, including in the Scottish Parliament. We wrote a summary briefing for MSPs based on the two reports.

Aspects of the Scottish Government’s nomination, appraisal, and more recently, Reporting process have been challenging. For instance, local community volunteers struggled with undertaking the nomination bid preparation and consultation with limited support from Government.  We had difficulty in contacting interested local groups that we were not already in touch with, due to GDPR rules. The ending of the Bute House Agreement  led to a period of uncertainty before John Swinney MSP,  the new First Minister of an SNP minority government, confirmed a commitment to the new National Park process.

With increased focus on National Parks, media interest grew during 2024, as did some opposition which we have responded to where possible – sometimes seeking to address real concerns and sometimes misinformation.  Much of the latter has been amplified, making the issue divisive and emotive and hard to discuss publicly in a productive, explorative way. 

For instance, we gave written and oral evidence to  the Scottish Parliament’s Petitions Committee about a petition, originally focused on Lochaber, asking for no new National Parks for Scotland. Following the announcement of Galloway as the proposed new National Park by Cabernet Secretary Mairi Gougeon in July, much of the negative campaign pivoted to Galloway. In the lull before the official Reporting process began a seemingly extremely well-funded media campaign against a new National Park in Galloway appeared.  

We continued to produce positive stories on social and in print media, to support the Galloway National Park Association (GNPA), and worked with a journalist who uncovered some evidence of who may be funding the campaign. Kat wrote a blog comparing the tactics of the “No Park” campaign with those of the one run against deposit return, warning of the new tactics that are being used against environmental and progressive campaigns. NatureScot ran a public consultation on  Galloway from October until February 2025. We encouraged other individuals and organisations to respond and shared our consultation response publicly as early as possible. 

We also welcomed the inclusion by the Scottish Government in September’s Programme for Government of a commitment to bring forward a Natural Environment Bill in this parliamentary session, and to include measures in it to modernise the management of National Parks in response to the consultation undertaken in 2023. 

Circular Economy and the Internal Market Act (IMA)

The Circular Economy Bill in Scotland offered an opportunity to continue our emphasis on the central role of producer responsibility and the need for a deposit return scheme as one of the mechanisms for delivering this. We achieved some changes to the Bill as a result of our work andAPRS leadership has resulted in wider awareness of the impact of the UK’s Internal Market Act (IMA) in the NGO community and LINK taking forward a work strand on IMA.

We were very disappointed in the consultation on the draft Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill and we put forward a number of key improvements in our consultation response. We had a strong collaboration across environment and development NGOs during our campaign for improvements to the Bill and we worked together while dividing up the work on sections of the Bill. 

We had a number of asks in the Stage One debate laid out in our briefing for MSPs. We managed to get producer responsibility into the discussions around the Bill in the form of ‘product stewardship’ and our further aim was to get ‘takeback’ into the Bill along with reuse. You can see our core asks for the Bill on our website.

We found that MSPs and the Scottish Government were very receptive to hearing from us as we were seen as having a track record in the field following our work on deposit return and the ‘Have You Got The Bottle?’ campaign.  APRS gave evidence at the Bill committee, following which the committee produced a report that centred many of the arguments that the NGOs made during their evidence.

Each of the amendments we proposed was put forward by an MSP and we ran a campaign with our supporters and members to email their MSPs to ask for support.

Disappointingly, despite the good discussions, the more ambitious amendments that we proposed did not pass. Across the coordinated NGO campaign, we did manage to make the Bill a bit stronger. One improvement we secured was to get a definition of the Waste Hierarchy into the Bill. Takeback and refillables must now be considered in the preparation of the Circular Economy, however this is far less ambitious than we wanted.

A summary of our view of the Act is here. It is clear that the success of anything within the Circular Economy (Scotland) Act 2024 will rely on the ambition, or otherwise, of the forthcoming? Circular Economy Strategy and we plan to continue holding the Scottish Government to account during this process.

UK-wide work

We were extremely disappointed when the UK Government put back the date of the UK-wide deposit return scheme to 2027. We have continued to support UK colleagues and take part in UK-wide initiatives, including working alongside manufacturers, retailers and environmental organisations to call on the new Prime Minister to implement deposit return as soon as possible.

Our experiences with deposit return showed the potential for the Internal Market Act to undermine environmental legislation, as, under the IMA, a reduction in environmental standards in one UK nation can hinder the rest of the UK in making positive environmental legislation. Part of our follow-on work from deposit return has been to bring together NGOs from the four countries, to make the case together for reform of the IMA by the new UK government. The Act was passed by a majority in the UK Government, even though Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland did not consent to its introduction. This work is now being taken forward by Scottish Environment LINK with the other LINKs who published a paper early in 2025 calling for reform of the IMA.

Joint Actions

We are most effective when we work in collaboration across the NGO community and in 2024 we continued to be active members of Scottish Environment LINK, sitting on the Planning, Sustainable Economy, and Land Use (as chair) Groups, and working with others to campaign and advocate. 

• We contributed to joint LINK consultation responses and reports on climate adaptation, 30×30, National Parks, Circular Economy, Nature Finance, Land Reform, Wellbeing and Sustainable Development Bill and Flood Resilience.

• We are part of a joint campaign with others on the Shared Rural Network – objecting to phone masts in extremely remote places that do not serve communities and businesses, and working within the LINK group on the Circular Economy Bill. We started working with CPRE and CPRW on a joint project on electricity infrastructure and landscape issues.  

• We signed joint letters to Keir Starmer on deposit return, the King on deer management at Balmoral, Scottish Government on Climate Ambition, Scottish Government on agriculture, the changing of the climate targets, and the Right to a Healthy Environment, among others.

• We met with Ministers on the subject of the Circular Economy and IMA 

Fundraising and Communications

APRS is a small charity with very limited reserves and so bringing in enough money to sustain the organisation each year is critical. In 2024 we put a lot of time into getting APRS more widely  known and to direct that interest towards membership and fundraising.  

Fundraising

We are extremely grateful to the following charitable trusts that have provided funding for APRS this year, some of which have provided regularly for many years: Tay Charitable Trust, Sylvia Aitken Charitable Trust, Whitley Animal Protection Trust, Mrs M H McMillan’s Charitable Trust, the Cruden Foundation and a generous charitable trust who wishes to remain anonymous.

At the end of 2023 we secured funding for our Green Belts work from Patagonia and the National Lottery Community  Fund, which allowed us to increase Nikki’s work to two days a week and we have been fundraising to continue this work into 2025. There has been a challenging fundraising environment in 2024 and we did not secure any additional funding from grants and trusts, despite applying to 14. However, a novel success of the year was the Big Give Green Match Fund, which doubled gifts to APRS during a week in April. We had not taken part in this previously and set ourselves a target of £5000 which we nearly met and so, with the match funding and gift aid, raised nearly £10,000. Delivering a contract for the Scottish Landscape Alliance to review the Landscape Charter, brought just over £10,000 into our coffers.

Staff fundraising through Kat’s Green Belts Walk, Barry’s fundraising cycle and Jo’s walk raised £1250 and we continued to work on the Circular Economy Bill thanks to some funding from TOMRA. We are extremely grateful for a legacy received at the end of 2023 from the estate of Judith Mylne, which enabled much of our work this year to continue, despite the difficult fundraising environment.

We have changed the Support Us page to make it far easier to give to APRS and to join. Membership and donations are now treated almost exactly the same – you just tick a box if you also want to join. There is no minimum or maximum fee for being a member if you support monthly. There is a  £40 minimum to be a member  if you pay a one-off payment. We had 15 new members this year (20 last year but not all stayed members). This is not a sustainable level of new memberships, even though it is better than the average of 7 new members per year over the 6 years previously. I echo the words of the writer of our 1936 Annual report who said:

“The increase of membership during the year has been disappointing, and members are asked to bring in friends to the support of the Association. A larger membership will strengthen the influence of the Association and make its financial position secure”. 1936 APRS Annual Report 

Communications

One of our aims this year has been to bring wider awareness of APRS to people in Scotland,  and we continued raising awareness of APRS through our social media channels, growing e-bulletin list and media stories. We were especially successful on the subject of National Parks, with more than 50 articles or broadcasts where APRS was quoted or interviewed. We also had a feature on Kat’s Green Belt walk in the Daily Record and on the Radio Programme Out of Doors, and a few articles in local newspapers, as well as a piece based on Kat’s blog on deposit return in the Guardian. Other media stories quoting APRS were on planning cases, farming in Galloway, the circular economy and the Ryvoan phone mast application.

Figure 1: Growth in the use of the APRS website continued in 2024. This figure shows the total number of individual users of the website and the total page views since 2022

Users of the new APRS website continue to grow, from 1.1K in 2022, 5.3K in 2023 to 14K in 2024. This amounts to 52,000 page views in 2024. We now have 457 subscribers to the non member e-bulletin (up from 331 last year and 45 in 2021) and in 2024 we sent out one printed newsletter, 6 email Bulletins and 4 Green Belts Alliance updates.

This year APRS decided to leave Twitter, but we joined Bluesky in August and already have nearly 700 followers and are gaining far more traction than on twitter. LinkedIn is growing but our following is small, Facebook can still perform well for events.

Other

Landscape Charter

APRS delivered a review of the Landscape Charter as a paid contract from the Scottish Landscape Alliance. The final report of the review contains reports from interviews, questionnaires, social media surveys, focus groups and a desk-based survey.

Preparing for our Centenary

We now have a growing online archive on the website and some articles on our history. Our physical archive has a new permanent home with Historic Environment Scotland who will be able to make that available to researchers.  

Office Move

In July we moved our office from Hunter Square, where we had been for a decade, to temporary office space shared with Global Justice Now at the Augustine United Church on George IV Bridge and are grateful to them for giving us a space with such an affordable rent. We hope to join with other LINK members in December 2025 in a shared office.  

Staff and Volunteers

Our staff are at the heart of our work and this year we had to say goodbye to two members of staff who had worked with us on the deposit return campaign. This annual report goes out with thanks to them, and to all the staff for their incredible contribution to what we have achieved in 2024.

In 2024 Nikki Sinclair increased her time on Green Belts to 2 days a week, from one day a week previously, and continued with 1 day a week on National Parks. Kat Jones, as Director, and Nina Sobecka, as Administrator, both worked three days a week.

Our long-running Deposit Return project, came to an end at the start of the year, but, thanks to a combination of the contract to review the Landscape Charter, and the Judith Mylne legacy, we retained Sarah Doherty two days a week to the end of July and Jo McFarlane two days a week to the end June. Barry Snedden worked one and a half days a week, on communications, throughout 2024.

We recruited four specialist volunteers each working around half a day a week each in 2024: an archivist, a historian, a press officer and an evaluator.

Looking Forward to 2025

Our Activities in 2025 will be to:

• continue our advice service support, and increase the online resources available, for communities campaigning to protect and improve greenspaces  in their local areas via the planning system, particularly those in designated Green Belts. 
• seek opportunities to advocate for improvements to the planning system and planning policy to benefit communities, nature and landscape
• continue with our long-running campaign for new National Parks for Scotland, supporting local campaigns, advising decision makers, and engaging the public.
• campaign for better access to Green Belts and countryside by the public. In 2025 we will be starting a campaign for core paths to go onto Ordinance Survey (OS) maps. After the first Land Reform (Scotland) Act, the paths did not go onto the OS maps, and there is now a unique opportunity to make that happen.
• continue working closely in collaboration with other organisations: community organisations and Planning Democracy on our Green Belts and planning work, Ramblers Scotland on a new campaign on core paths, and Scottish Environment LINK on many elements of policy work that affect our countryside and landscapes.

Kat Jones, December 2024