Bob Milton

Day 6.

On the sixth day of Christmas:

Rights of Way. One Highway authority claims the back log of existing claims would take over twenty years to even research.

Reports of cut backs in rights of way and countryside access departments are not grossly under estimated. Cost cutting across the board has reach new heights with the wholesale sacking in one local authority of a whole department and the requirement to reapply for a restructured and minimised group.

All this on the back of a back log in some authorities of hundreds of claims for rights of way and the lack of enforcement for obstructions and encroachments. One Highway authority even worked it out that given the rate of dealing with claims the back log of existing claims would take over twenty years to even research.

Many Rights of way departments are now renamed just Access or Countryside Access since the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. So the added work is being done by the same people. Countryside Access is a much bigger than just rights of way as it not only includes the ‘right to roam’ but within that are all the exemption such as the one third of all commons that have existing higher rights.

It seems that officers spend a lot of their precious time finding excuses why their authorities can not do something, for example no policy, different department or just too expensive.

With the ever closing date for lost ways in 2025 what is needed is a substantial push to get claims into the system or we will loss them

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