Posted: 18th January 2021 | Back to news feed
Landowners, walkers and local authorities need to work together to ensure communities can enjoy a carefully planned and properly maintained network of public rights of way, a firm of chartered surveyors has stressed.
South East Land Management experts Batcheller Monkhouse believe that dealing with claims over historic rights of way – some of which serve no useful purpose – are preventing the creation of a more useful network of paths.
“If lockdown has taught us one thing, it’s that this country needs a properly maintained, sensible network of public rights of way that serves local communities and provides good access to green spaces in the right places,” explained Partner Leo Hickish.
“People want routes that connect with open spaces as well as with other towns and villages, but in reality paths often go nowhere and are in many cases poorly maintained, partly because local authorities are having to spend much of their rights of way budgets on legal fees and admin costs.”
The problem, Leo explained, is that county councils already strapped for cash are having to spend time and money dealing with claims from walkers’ group keen to see historic paths reinstated before the deadline for such claims expires on 1 January 2026.
It was the Countryside and Rights of Way (CROW) Act of 2000 which brought in the deadline alongside the long-awaited ‘right to roam’ that campaigners had been seeking for many years.
“By setting a deadline for the first time it galvanised walking and riding groups into action, and with the deadline now less than five years away, councils and landowners are facing more and more claims as the clock ticks down,” said Leo.
The Ramblers’ Don’t Lose Your Way campaign claims to have found 49,138 miles of rights of way missing from the definitive map for England and Wales. It is racing to save them by 2026 as otherwise, it says, they will be “lost forever”.
Leo commented: “Those who seek to reinstate every historic path simply because they can, miss an important point. Many of the routes became disused for a good reason; no-one used them any more because they no longer went where anyone wanted to go. What we should be doing instead is persuading landowners and outdoor groups to work together to create sensible routes that everyone can enjoy.”
Some historic routes now cut through gardens and across people’s drives, but challenging such applications can lead to an expensive public inquiry and, in Leo’s view, distract attention from the aim of providing a network of useful paths that gives access to the countryside without harming anyone’s privacy.
“As a firm we act for landowners who are affected by applications to reinstate former rights of way, but we don’t believe it’s in anyone’s interests for these wrangles to continue. We would urge the groups involved to work with landowners and look for sensible routes that people can enjoy, particularly now that walking is so important for wellbeing and mental health,” he said.
“The CROW Act was designed to introduce a better approach to path diversions, but despite several years of consultation, it never happened. We are still waiting for legislation that might make the process easier, but until that arrives, I hope common sense will prevail.
“The additional benefit of getting this right, of course, is that local authorities would no longer need to spend time and money endlessly reviewing claims for footpaths to be reinstated, and could instead spend their limited budgets on maintaining existing rights of way.
“When fighting one case at a public inquiry can cost £50,000, that’s a lot of maintenance they could be doing instead.”
For more information or to contact Batcheller Monkhouse please visit: www.batchellermonkhouse.com/
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