Examination of Witnesses(Questions 77-79)
MONDAY 3 FEBRUARY 2003
MR MARK
HUDSON, MRS
CAROLINE BEDELL
AND DR
KAREN JONES
Chairman
77. For the third part of the play, as it were,
the third act, we have Mr Mark Hudson, the Deputy President of
the Country Land and Business Association, Dr Karen Jones, the
Chief Legal Adviser and Mrs Caroline Bedell, who is the Access
Adviser. Thank you very much for coming and thank you for listening
to the earlier part of our discussion, I guess you know the things
that we are interested in. Let me just ask a broad brush question
to begin with, Mark, how do you think the process is going? What
is the CLA's view on how the process is going?
(Mr Hudson) I think the process is proceeding
reasonably well, you have had a lot of evidence already today
from the Ramblers' Association and the Minister and his advisors
that it is a very complicated and time-consuming process and there
are problems that we are finding, particularly in the mapping,
which you teased out a bit from the Minister. We are particularly
concerned about two things, if I may say so, one is resources,
which again we have spent a lot of time talking to the Minister
about, and the Chief Executive of the Ramblers' Association made
his point quite clearly there. We are concerned if there are insufficient
resources coming who is going to pay for the costs that are required
and, secondly, we are very concerned about the liability, and
that is something that you have not touched on yet today, and
it follows to a certain extent from resources.
78. Shall we deal with the liability first.
As I understand it what you are saying is if you have mine workings
or old pit sites up on the hills and somebody has a right of access
and goes down the hole who is liable?
(Mr Hudson) I would like to ask Dr Karen Jones to
take that question, if I may.
(Dr Jones) It is a little bit more than that. As it
stands, under the Mines and Quarries Act generally at the moment
you do not have to fence off or cap old mines or quarries unless
they are accessible to the public and dangerous. It is quite a
draconian preventive measure and it only kicks in when you have
a real problem of accessibility. The point with these old mines
in particular is in practice it is not known where many of them
are and obviously on access land you are going to be in a situation
where by definition they will be accessible to the public, so
immediately you then have right from day one the responsibility
of the occupiers to try and find these mines and cap them or fence
them and on quarries to fence them off whether they are abandoned
or not. That was never intended and as a result and there is a
provision I have written about—and I will not bore you with
it—in CRoW that would allow the Government to introduce
regulations to make it so that very draconian preventive measures
did not have to take place from day one with the huge cost implications
associated with it and we are saying, "Look, please, do not
see them as backburner type regulations you can bring in any old
time, please bring them in before you get the right of access",
particularly as it has been accelerated. Please do not ignore
these key regulations otherwise people have a very big cost burden
from day one, which I do not think was intended.
79. What are Defra saying? Where are these regulations?
(Dr Jones) We have not seen them.
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