A year of campaigning success

15 December 2020 by Olly Hicks-Pattison
Despite the challenges of the Coronavirus pandemic, our work protecting and improving our ability to access and enjoy the outdoors hasn’t stopped. We have been working harder than ever across England, Scotland and Wales, with thousands of volunteers up and down the country, to increase everyone’s access to the countryside and improve our ability to walk in nature-rich green spaces. 

 

Several people, outdoors, holding up Don't Lose Your Way posters

 

Here are ten standout milestones we achieved together this year:

  1. Through our Don’t Lose Your Way campaign we searched all of England and Wales and found over 49,000 miles of missing paths, creating the first ever map of lost paths to help us save them over the coming years.
  2. We influenced the new Agriculture Act so that farmers can receive financial support if they enhance public access. Our Welsh team have also ensured that public access is listed as a public good in the Welsh agriculture proposals.
  3. We published the results of a year-long pilot project and found that there could be thousands of ‘hidden paths’ on the ground in Scotland. Our Mapping Scotland Paths project has now been rolled out nationwide.
  4. Thanks to our evidence, the Welsh climate change committee recommended to the government that the Welsh planning framework recognise rights of way and access land as a national asset.
  5. We saved 16 level crossings from closure on key walking routes across Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, following a long running legal challenge against Network Rail. 
  6. Our lobbying work in Wales has helped secure £1.35m of funding for Rights of Way improvement plans.
  7. Together with ScotWays and a coalition of conservation organisations, we have saved the internationally-protected dunes at Coul Links in Sutherland, on Scotland’s east coast, from damaging development.
  8. We’ve continued to support the opening of the England Coast Path, responding to consultations on five more stretches. This year we’ve seen another 21 miles of coast path open to the public, meaning that around half of the route is now open or at least partially approved.
  9. Our work to protect Scotland’s landscapes led to a landowner being ordered to remove a damaging hill track in scenic Glen Clova in the Cairngorms National Park.
  10. We secured a commitment to more accessible, high quality Rights of Way in the Healthy Weight Healthy Wales strategy for tackling obesity.

Throughout the year we’ve also been responding to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Across England, Scotland and Wales we’ve worked to support efforts to prioritise pedestrians in our towns and cities. In Wales, we led a coalition against rights of way closures introduced to stop people walking during lockdowns, and in Scotland we successfully influenced the Scottish government to deal with issues at hotspots through education, enforcement and investment, rather than new laws restricting access rights in these areas.

 

We couldn’t have achieved any of this without you and your passion for protecting the places we love to walk. Thousands of you helped us map lost paths, wrote to your MPs, responded to consultations, signed petitions, shared your stories and gave your voice to a community of over 100,000 walkers across England, Scotland and Wales.

We look forward to continuing to achieve great things together in 2021 when we’ll see local elections across the country, the Environment Bill making its way through parliament, the implementation of the Agriculture Act and the full route of the England Coast Path approved. 

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Ivy Fern


These so called 49,000 ‘missing’ paths include miles of paths now in Stanford Battle area, paths through schools and housing estates and tracks over farms or land which have always been private not ‘Public.’To say that they have been ‘lost’ and the general public deprived of their ‘rights’ is gross untruth and vexatious propaganda.
I believe that the ground root ‘ramblers’ are largely unaware of the harm this is causing to a small but significant amount of ordinary homeowners and farmers caught up in this ‘claim anything’ culture now promoted by the Ramblers Society. I really do think that they would be horrified if they knew how much public money was being wasted on council time and inquiries driven by a few ‘access obsessed’ individuals, lauded only by the numbers of claims they can make before 2026.
Not ALL claims are without merit and they are not ALL intrusive, but no distinction is made and NO sensible rules apply to obvious exceptions. Claims can are ARE made that go through peoples living rooms,directly through the middle of their gardens. Multiple claims over farmland, one farmer has claims for 8 bridleways over his farm. One should ask just what his farm is for, leisure riding or growing food?
Ordinary ramblers probably think that theses claims are soon ‘sorted out’. They most likely think that sensible solutions are found. They are unlikely to know that theses claims can stay in the system for anything up to 50 years with those affected dying before any decision is reached.
There is plenty of evidence available for all to find but most turn a blind eye and choose to ignore.
It really concerns me that Ramblers are unwillingly or unable to encompass any concern or consideration for this rapidly growing problem which now,because of the amounts of claims stuck in the creaking PROW system, has the capacity to cause its complete failure.
Questions to ask.........

1. Why is the ramblers organisation so unwillingly to engage with those who suffer intrusive public footpaths?
2. Why do the ramblers encourage their members to make ‘scattergun’ modification claims, even when this involves intrusive footpaths which are not recorded, do not physically exist or are not in the countryside?
3. Why do the ramblers not recognise that these sorts of claims are detrimental to all concerned causing confrontation, misunderstanding and public hostility?
4. How can ramblers justify the huge amounts of public money spent on these claims when that money could be more beneficially spent on the countryside itself?
5. Why do ramblers ignore the fact that any countryside code will have little effect on anti social behaviour, flytipping and crime, all of which anyone with a PROW through their property is left to cope with.

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