Dear Roamers,
The Labour Party have trailed their manifesto commitments on access, due to be officially published next week.
While we're glad the big parties are talking about access...
Honestly? We’re not impressed.
Labour say they want to create “nine new National River Walks”, representing “hundreds of miles” of new riverside paths.
They say the new paths will predominantly be created via negotiation with landowners.
For context, there are around 150,000 miles of waterways in England. So even, say, 750 miles of paths would amount to 0.5% of new access. That’s the sort of ambition you might expect from a borough council, not a national government.
Meanwhile, without a foundation of wider statutory rights of access, there’s little to stop landowners refusing to play ball.
It would likely take a long time to implement: using the River Dart (Devon) as an example, agreements would be required on 748 separate parcels of land.
And the proposals would also do nothing to guarantee rights to the water itself: so you could still find yourself being shouted at just for going for a swim.
The result might be something like the Test Way (Berkshire / Hampshire): a route named after a river it barely touches, due to the hostility of riparian landowners to public access.
Now, just because it’s not in the manifesto doesn’t mean there is no intention to implement bolder plans in government. We know Labour are running a hyper-cautious campaign, and will be minimising the target on as many issues as they can.
Still, so far it’s a poor offer that’s incommensurate with the challenges we’re facing, and the losses we’re seeing. Labour say they want the landscape to be a source of "national pride", yet - so far - they're offering little to help us experience it.
The numbers are in: Scotland's "Right to Roam" was far cheaper than CRoW
We know there's a better way: creating the default right of responsible access we’ve been campaigning for, with support for access infrastructure - like river paths - where it’s required.
Guy has been busy crunching the numbers. And It turns out that England’s Countryside and Rights of Way Act (which extended the right to roam to just 8% of the countryside) cost over *six times* what it cost Scotland to introduce their comprehensive right of responsible access – which created far greater rights for a far wider range of activities.
Total costs for implementing Part 1 of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act amounted to just shy of £11 million, whereas the comparatively partial CRoW Act totalled £69.5 million. And most of what they did spend in Scotland went to funding Local Access Officers, rather than complicated mapping exercises.
You can read our story about it in the Guardian here.
Whoever is elected in July, we’ll be continuing to make the case for that approach.
It’s cheap, it’s popular, and it’s straightforward to implement.
We’ll keep you informed about all the other party commitments on access as they emerge.
And if you’d like to get in touch with your local parliamentary candidates to express your views on their respective offers, please do!
Jon
and the rest of the Right to Roam team
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