Funding for Rights of Way Improvement Plans

  Funding

The incorporation of rights of way improvement plans within LTPs offers a vital source of funding for rights of way improvement proposals, since LTPs are used as a bidding document for local transport schemes.  In 2005/6 the total local transport settlement is £1.6 billion so, potentially, there is a large pot of money available for this work.

All local transport authorities in England are required by the Transport Act 2000 to prepare a new provisional LTP by the end of July 2005 with the opportunity to produce revised and finalised LTP by the end of March 2006.  However, London Boroughs and local authorities classed as 'excellent' by the Audit Commission's Comprehensive Performance Assessment are exempt from this requirement.  Instead all London Boroughs are required to produce a Local Implementation Plan and have regard to walking and cycling.  And all 'excellent' local authorities are required to develop Local Transport Strategies and local authorities have the freedom to decide for themselves how these strategies are encapsulated within plans.  'Excellent' local authorities also have a "statutory duty to have regard to the ROWIP provisions", even though they do not have to produce a Plan.

The guidance also gives examples of a number of potential improvements that highway authorities may wish to consider:

• access to and within attractive areas of countryside which might currently have few rights of way such as watersides, coast and woodlands, or access to a particular viewpoint, feature or other attraction;

• attractive routes in order to support local tourism, economic regeneration or community-led initiatives;

• opportunities for cycling, harness-horse driving, horse riding and walking other than on roads used  mainly by motor vehicles; and links in the network which enable people to avoid having to use such roads;

• routes from centres of population, or routes which can be used in conjunction with public transport, which allow people to gain easy access to countryside from where they live;

• links which create circular routes and better facilities for walkers, including dog walkers, runners, cyclists, horse riders and harness-horses drivers for leisure and health;

• routes near waterside or coastal paths which may suffer from natural erosion;

• routes to help ameliorate the effect on people's enjoyment of the countryside of a motorway or other major road or development;

• convenient and safe crossings over railways, rivers and canals;

• the current rights of way network such as ways ending in cul-de-sacs or routes carrying different rights along their lengths;

• routes for local journeys, such as walking to work, to the shops, railway stations, doctor's surgeries and other local amenities; and

• routes through or around heavily developed areas, to ensure that such development does not prevent or disrupt the continuity of the network.

Funding the Improvements

The new legislation only places a requirement on highway authorities to prepare a plan, not to implement it.  Part of the reason is to encourage highway authorities to be innovative in sourcing funding for the improvements. The government has also said that money will be made available as part of wider transport planning: "It is envisaged that rights of way improvement planning will be a distinct strand within the new Local Transport Plans and the revised Guidance on Full Local Transport Plans (planned for 2004) will cover this point". In 2003/04 the total local transport settlement was £1.6 billion so, potentially, there is a large pot of money available for this work.

However, the RA is concerned about the apparent disparity between the timetable for the completion of rights of way improvement plans, compared with that for local transport plans.  If authorities are to obtain money for implementing their plans through the next round of LTPs covering the period 2006/7 to 2010/11, they will need to have their improvement plans well underway by the LTP submission date of July 2005.

How you can help

Find out what timetable your highway authority is working to, and how you can feed into the process, for example, many highway authorities are distributing questionnaires to gather views on the existing network and how it can be improved.

If it does not already intend to do so, urge your highway authority to get its plan prepared, at least in draft form, by April 2005, so that the suggested improvements can be incorporated within its LTP.

Contact the appropriate Ramblers' Association footpath secretary if you have ideas about ways in which the local rights of way network can be improved.

Natural England Pilot Projects

Because rights of way improvement plans are a completely new concept, Natural England has funded nine exemplar demonstration projects. Highway authorities in the following areas carried out work on specific aspects of the plans: Bedfordshire, Cheshire, Dorset, Hampshire, Nottinghamshire, Shropshire and Telford, York and Northumberland. This was coordinated by consultants and the findings are available in the Institute of Public Rights of Way Officers' (IPROW) Good Practice Guide.