Can a location app help deter dirty camping in Highland?

A Sutherland woman says a location app would be "useful" in identifying dirty campers, whilst a Highland Councillor has concerns.

What3words is being used by the Perth and Kinross Council Visitor Management Group to help identify dirty campers.

It divides the world into 57 trillion three by three metre squares – each of which are named with their own unique set of three English words.

The exact location of dirty campers would be pinpointed for reporting to the relevant authorities.

Margaret Meek helps run well-known Facebook page "NC500 - The Land Weeps," which was set up last year to gather evidence of irresponsible behaviour along the route.

She believes what3words could be useful as the region prepares for an influx of visitors once COVID travel restrictions are lifted.

She said: "It shows great potential for a lot of different uses.

"In the case of dirty camping, I think it would be really useful to the rangers that are soon going to be hired and will be patrolling the area.

"Ultimately, it would produce a really useful map of where the hotspots are and that would be a very good use of it.

"It's an excellent app for locating spots geographically with great accuracy.

"It's really easy to use and I think it would be a good thing in this instance, to build up a picture of where the problem points are.

"I can think of an instance here where there were nine vehicles parked overnight and they had a roaring fire all night.

"They left a huge mess, it would have been worthy of reporting because it was such a huge mess.

"Something like this app would make it very easy to relay the location."

Chair of Highland Council's Tourism Committee, Councillor Gordon Adam has some reservations.

He said: "What exactly is dirty camping? People have got different ideas about that.

"Is it something which is any campsite within sight of any public road? Other people would take the view that it could be a perfectly legitimate camp, people being perfectly respectable.

"On the other hand, there could be people who are within sight of a public road who are having a wild party and clearly making a terrific mess.

"The other difficulty is in most cases, dirty camping is not apparent until after the campers have left.

"In which case the Police are going to be arriving at the scene well after the campers have left.

"I'm not sure they really welcome a lot of calls which could be seen as a waste of their time.

"Might be helpful to the council, it alerts them to where there is a mess and will allow them to clear it up, but I'm not sure it would do much to deter or detain offenders.

"We don't want to encourage a culture of informing, because it would be extremely putting off, there would inevitably be a number of innocent people who are informed against."

Asked whether it would be discussed at Highland Council, Cllr Adam said it's a "possibility."

He added: "Our first step is to find out a little bit more about the whole thing and get in touch with Perth and Kinross to see how they can put it into operation.

"Then we can take a view as to whether or not it's something we want to pursue, in which case, of course it would go up to the Tourism committee."