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Our general secretary, Kate Ashbrook, urges the government to act for access.
Every Labour government since the second-world war has taken major steps, with landmark legislation, to improve public access to the countryside. Nearly a year since its election, what will this government do?
Environment ministers seem genuinely sympathetic. There is talk of a green paper, and a flurry of online workshops and sticky notes. But clear objectives have yet to emerge and there is no apparent prospect of legislation.
Manifesto
We have already done much of the work for a green paper. Last year 52 organisations signed up to the Outdoors for All manifesto with a sheaf of propositions.
That document calls on government to extend public-access rights to more landscapes close to home; embed public-access options in farm-payment schemes; establish an access-to-nature investment strategy to fund the maintenance, improvement, and extension of access opportunities—and much more. These proposals would underpin a green paper.
A government intent on improving public access should put this at the heart of its proposals for land use and planning. Instead, its proposed land-use framework barely mentions access; and it is entirely absent from the Planning and Infrastructure Bill.
This bill charges Natural England to produce environmental delivery plans which set out how to address the impact that development has on protected sites or species, and to support nature recovery. There is no mention of replacing public access lost to building, and no requirement to provide public green-space as part of a new development.
How does this indifference to open spaces square with the government’s commitment in the Environment Improvement Plan that ‘everyone should live within 15 minutes’ walk of a green or blue space’? Little if any progress has been made here. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill should charge Natural England to produce access delivery plans as well as environmental ones, securing green space on people’s doorsteps.
Commercial
Even the spaces we thought were safe are at risk. There is an increase in abuse of local-authority owned spaces for commercial activities such as festivals, resulting in public exclusion, noise, litter, and damage. The large profits are not being devoted to those spaces which have been defiled. There should be statutory standards for the care of public parks.
Of course, local authorities are strapped for cash, but that is no reason to exploit vital green spaces or to cease investing in them. Indeed, small expenditures on public access provision bring astonishing returns in improvements to our health and well-being, and to local, rural economies.
Post-war Labour knew it must invest in public access. Why not now?
Header image: Dan Senior