Support us from £3/month
We deal with almost 1000 cases a year assisting communities, groups and individuals in protecting their local spaces and paths in all parts of England and Wales. Can you help us by joining as a member?
Our general secretary, Kate Ashbrook, urges the new Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Emma Reynolds, to act for access. Kate welcomes Emma to the role and writes:
We hope Emma will bring change where now there is stagnation. Let’s hope she recognises that public access, too often relegated to the bottom of the agenda, is given its proper place in the department’s work.
It is 15 months since Labour, with its inspiring history of legislating for access and countryside, came into power. We cheer its promise to repeal the 2031 cut-off for claiming historic paths (already done in Wales), and to ‘widen the public’s access to nature through strengthened purposes’ for our protected landscapes—but how? And when?
Shrinking time
Government remains coy about a green paper on access; the inquiry undertaken by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on access should kick-start activity at Defra (page 12). But that is only the start, and the time to implement it is ever-shrinking.
Much can be done without legislation: it needs only amended regulations to extend rights to backpack camp on access land mapped under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 (CROW) in the wake of the Dartmoor-camping judgment (page 6), and to register lost commons beyond Cumbria and North Yorkshire (to bring parity with landowners’ ability to deregister land in most of England).
But legislation is vital to win greater rights of access to woodland and water. It is needed to connect access ‘islands’ and enforce blocked access, such as at Grays Bank, Ibstone, in Emma’s Wycombe (Bucks) constituency. Here a stretch of fine downland, where we have the right to walk, remains accessible only by parachute because the landowner has deer-fenced it against the public—one of many such sites which are denied to us.
Grays Bank is one of many examples of land which is being unlawfully denied to the public. Photo: Open Spaces Society
Landowners continue to call the shots. We need the path-diversion procedures changed to give the public greater say when landowners try to move paths in their own interests. The official guidance, which advises highway authorities to give more than legal weight to owners’ privacy and security, should be withdrawn.
There are countless barriers to access. We tackle some, and get results, but each takes enormous time, effort, and money. The law to reopen blocked paths and free commons from encroachment should be made easier for hard-pressed local authorities, and the public, to use.
Equitable
To secure more equitable access, and for people’s health, we desperately need well-maintained and funded open spaces close to their homes (already promised).
This November we celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of CROW, a step change in access. We invite Emma to mark it decisively with another step change, a new law which provides more, better, and guaranteed access for all.
Over to you Emma!