RIGHT TO ROAM FROM THE ROAMERS — IT’S ALL A SLOW PROCESS — BUT WORTH THE READ

Can't see this message? View in browser   Five Years. Nine Failures. Fifteen Signs of Hope. Dear Roamers, Over the past five years there have been no fewer than nine major policy announcements, commitments, or reviews of public access. All of which have since been shelved, abandoned, diluted, or have otherwise vanished into the ether. First, the Agnew Review – announced during the heady days of the pandemic, when access inequality was at the forefront of everyone’s mind. This promised “radical, joined up thinking” that would lead to a “quantum shift in how our society supports people to access and engage with the outdoors”. It was shelved. Next: the government’s response to the Glover ‘Landscapes Review’, with its clarion cry that ‘fair access is given to all’. To evidence action taken, the government scrabbled together a handful of regional initiatives it had little hand in… and a poetry prize. In response to Glover’s call for enhanced access rights on access land, the government said it would “aim to review the open access maps to clarify rights and inform any further consideration of expanding open access rights”. Aim to review – translation: ‘think about considering’. It didn’t happen. Then came the, admittedly bold, declaration that everyone ‘will live a fifteen minute walk from a green space or water’. An idea which promised to defy laws of physics and geography unless the government simultaneously enacted the comprehensive right to roam the minister was quick to explicitly rule out. This is still technically government policy. But when we made a freedom of information request about progress it turned out no one had actually done any real work on the proposal and the suggestion to make it a legally binding target had been quashed. So much for that. Still, on and on the announcements came and went. In 2023, Rishi Sunak announced the “search” for a new national park in England. I guess he’s still looking. Around the same time a ‘woodland access implementation plan’ was published, promising to “enhance and create new access rights in woodlands”. It didn’t. Perhaps having a new party in power would finally lead to some actual delivery. Unfortunately here too the record has been mixed. Labour committed to a Scottish style right to roam (yay!), U-turned after lobbying pressure from the major landowning and farming lobbies (boo!) re-committed to extending the CRoW Act (mostly yay!), which became a commitment to a White paper (okay!), which became a commitment to a Green paper (hrm!) which has been kicked into the long grass (sigh!) and is now due to be “published [sometime] this parliament”. Last Boxing Day they promised to remove the 2031 cut off for registering historic rights of way. But they still haven’t allocated parliamentary time for it to happen. Still, just as under the Conservatives, the announcement machine keeps rolling. The latest Boxing Day splash saw the government declare that the first of their “nine national river walks” was to be piloted on the river Mersey. Long term readers of the newsletter will know we’ve been highly critical of these proposals, and this announcement did little to dampen our objections. It appears the Mersey, which is already one of the more accessible rivers in England, won’t actually receive any new access. Instead the existing path will be getting accessibility upgrades. No bad thing. But a level of ambition worthy of a parish council, not a national government. Governing is hard and we’d love to be more positive about what politics can achieve. After all, the flood of announcements does reflect awareness that the access issue is popular, necessary and not going away. But it’s hard not to conclude that Westminster is currently more committed to the theatre of change than to actually changing lives. This year we need to break through that inertia. To help, this weekend we’re hosting our very first in-person gathering of the entire Right to Roam local group network. This has steadily grown to fifteen regions since we launched it exactly three years ago and we’re excited to finally have an opportunity to meet representatives from across the country to strategise a way forward. We appreciate that not everyone can make these kinds of events (you probably don’t have the time and we don’t yet have the space!) but if you have thoughts you'd like to contribute to the conversation, reply to us here and we’ll throw them into the mix. Best wishes, Jon and the Right to Roam team ---------- For the latest campaign updates, follow us on Instagram & Bluesky To get involved, check out our website here. Can you help keep us roaming? Head to ‘Donate’ here. Learning from those who make muck prosper Take Action Visit our social accounts Check out our site   This email was sent from this site. If you no longer wish to receive this email, change your email preferences here.