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 chairman, Phil Wadey, has been made an MBE in the New Year’s Honours, for services to rights of way.
Phil Wadey.
Phil, a walker and rider, specialises in historical research with the aim of adding paths to the official (definitive) maps. Having been working on this for more than 35 years, he has so far recorded 55 kilometres (almost 35 miles), mostly in Hertfordshire. He is co-author, with Sarah Bucks, of Rights of Way: Recording the Record and they have run many training days to encourage volunteers to apply to add paths to the maps.
Says Stuart Bain, our vice-chairman: ‘We are delighted that Phil has received this award—but it is somewhat ironic. The citation is for “services to rights of way”, yet the government appears to be ignoring rights of way.
‘It is now more than a year since it promised to repeal the deadline for recording historic routes, yet it has done nothing. That deadline is 1 January 2031, five years today, when the rights to hundreds of unrecorded highways will be lost for ever. The backlogs of claims with local authorities are ever-increasing as researchers desperately try to save paths by submitting applications for them. Revocation of that deadline is urgently needed. The Welsh government has repealed the deadline so why not the Westminster government?’
Woodrake Lane, Hertfordshire, now recorded as Colney Heath 60, part byway, part bridleway. Phil applied for this in January 2010 and it was confirmed, without objections, in August 2017, seven and a half years later.
Phil, who now lives in Corsham, Wiltshire, was also regional access officer for the East of England for British Horse Society and continues to be a volunteer. He is a spacecraft operations and engineering specialist.