Walkers are celebrating a landmark decision by Birmingham City Council that will see the city's rights of way network legally protected and preserved, following a 20 year campaign by the Ramblers' Association.
Currently Birmingham is without a 'definitive map' - the legal record of public rights of way - leaving its paths vulnerable to development pressures, damage and obstruction. The council's decision, announced at a local access forum meeting this month, will see about 145 paths around the city recorded on the definitive map, enshrining them in law. The newly-recorded rights of way will be better protected and secure for future generations.
The mapping process is expected to take many years, and will kick off this August when paperwork for a path in Perry Barr is completed. The Council has guaranteed £110,000 per year from Capital Funding to carry out the necessary work.
Bob Hunt, Footpath Secretary for the City of Birmingham RA, comments: "Birmingham City Council deserve the warmest congratulations for their far-sighted decision to fund a Definitive Map for Birmingham.
“The City of Birmingham RA have campaigned for this for years. The definitive map will help protect the historical paths used by our ancestors, and ensure that we have legally defined, traffic-free rights of way at a time when we are all being encouraged to walk more.”
The decision follows a 20 year campaign by the Ramblers' Association. This started in 1988, when Birmingham City Council was directed to make an order to add a path to the definitive map under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Following a long delay by the City Council, who claimed the act was "inappropriate", the City of Birmingham Ramblers Group began to regularly lobby the council. Over the next 20 years, RA members, such as Footpath Secretaries Steven Wallsgrove and Fred Willits, independently researched historic paths. In 2003 Chairman Bob Hunt initiated a post card lobbying campaign, and in 2004 the City established its Access Forum, which took up the cause of the production of a definitive map.
RA Warwickshire Area Footpath Secretary, Steven Wallsgrove, has currently researched 41 paths, including pre- 1949 public rights of way. They are expected to be put on the definitive map in due course.
Bob Hunt comments: "Thanks are due to the members of the City of Birmingham Group who are continuing to survey these paths and to the Area Footpath Secretary Steven Wallsgrove who has done all the research and put the claims together. The Group will continue to work closely with the Rights of Way team in the Highways Department. There is a great deal of work to be done in the years ahead but that vital first step has been made. "
