Stiles
This council calls on Areas and Groups to urge local authorities and landowners to replace the conventional step-stiles, which form a barrier to many walkers in the countryside, when they become due for replacement, by devices which would render footpaths passable by a much wider section of the public.
This General Council believes that at a time when more and more people are enjoying the benefits of rambling until later in life and the Ramblers is actively engaged in encouraging the provision of access to CRoW land, that the Executive Committee should use its best endeavours to persuade the local authorities to adopt a policy of requiring the provision of the least restrictive option, rather than stiles, on rights of way and access land.This policy does not apply to stiles and other path furniture which are heritage landscape features, such as stone squeezer stiles in the Yorkshire Dales.
This Council welcomes the publication of the British Standard5709:2001 Gaps, Gates and Stiles as an important step towards achieving a more accessible path network.
Council resolves that the Association will seek, via Scottish and Welsh Councils, Areas and Groups, to have the principles of the Standard applied to all paths and routes used by walkers—whether or not public rights of way—by the end of 2007.
