Memorandum submitted by the Ramblers'
Association (V02)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Ramblers' Association (RA) protects the
rights and promotes the interests of walkers. The RA gives a cautious
welcome to the proposal to create a new integrated land management
agency. The RA can see the benefits but is concerned that the
issue of public access to the countryside will not be given sufficient
"weighting" within the many tasks that the new agency
has to undertake. The Government's Rural Delivery Strategy has
put into place an acceptable framework but hereon very careful
consideration needs to be given to the detail as the new agency
is established—so as to ensure that bio-diversity enhancement,
landscape protection and opportunities for public access to the
countryside can be maximised. The RA believes that if people can
experience what is being protected, they will have far greater
enthusiasm for protecting it.
IN DETAIL
1. The Ramblers' Association (RA) is the
UK's largest organisation protecting the rights and promoting
the interests of walkers. It aims to promote walking, to promote
the integrity of the footpath network, to secure greater access
on foot to the countryside and to protect the outdoor environment.
The RA has 143,000 members organised into 450 local groups throughout
England, Scotland and Wales. In addition over 900 "private"
walking clubs are affiliated to the RA.
2. In responding to the Government's Rural
Delivery Strategy, the RA will restrict its comments to the proposal
to establish an integrated land management agency with responsibility
for bio-diversity, landscape protection and public access.
3. The RA's starting point is that public
access to the countryside, far from being a desirable "add
on", stands at the centre of a rural revival and much else
besides. Access is about tourism, the rural economy, good health,
recreational opportunities and greater understanding between town
and country. It is about equity. The closure of the countryside
during the foot and mouth crisis led to clear acknowledgement
by all that access is fundamental to the social and economic health
of rural areas. It is precisely because access has so many cross-cutting
themes that it needs strong policy and delivery champions—lest
it becomes everyone's business and no one's responsibility.
4. There is much that the Countryside Agency
has done in the past that should be applauded. This includes work
on public access, social inclusion and public health, sustainable
transport and new national parks. This chimes very well with the
Government's broader aims of a countryside for everyone, improving
the health of the nation and the quality of people's lives. It
would be a great loss if that agenda were not carried forward
into the work of the new agency.
5. Whilst the RA supports the creation of
an integrated agency, its overriding concern is that the issue
of access to the countryside (which covers everything from footpaths,
national parks, national trails, the new right of access to open
country, walking for health, the role of introducing new groups
of people to the countryside and so on) is taken seriously within
the new agency. The RA's greatest fear is that countryside access
moves to an agency in which the prevailing culture is fundamentally
hostile to public access to the countryside. In crude terms, access
is "crushed by the conservation junkies". More diplomatically,
there is the danger that access will be over-looked in a large
multi-purpose agency and this would be just as damaging.
6. These fears are not without foundation.
We described access as "the bastard son" of agri-environment
schemes at the 10th anniversary of the Countryside Stewardship
scheme—precisely because those agri-environment schemes
have done little for public access. The track record of the Countryside
Council for Wales (CCW) on access is not great. Not only are 50%
of the public rights of way in Wales impossible to use, but recent
surveys have concluded that the footpath situation is no better
in the much vaunted Tir Gofal scheme, the pride of CCW's integrated
land management projects. Scottish Natural Heritage played a pretty
feeble role in comparison to the NGO sector in the lobbying for,
and construction of, the robust access legislation that is the
cornerstone of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act. Our practical experience
in England suggests that there can be little enthusiasm for, if
not hostility to, public access amongst the on-the-ground staff
of environmental and conservation agencies and organisations,
despite the right sort of noises being made in their respective
central offices.
7. Having said this, the fact is that there
is enormous and widespread enthusiasm for greater promotion of
public access to the countryside. The RA worked very effectively
with a broad coalition of conservation and recreation NGOs when
it came to lobbying for the introduction and implementation of
the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. There are many grant
giving trusts wanting to give money to projects that get people
into the countryside. Social inclusion and health projects are
"popping up" all over the place to support and enable
people to enjoy and learn from being outdoors. The freedom to
roam as delivered by the CRoW Act has been widely welcomed in
public opinion polls.
8. Whilst we recognise that much to do with
practical access delivery remains with local and national park
authorities, there will always be the need for a champion to monitor,
incentivise, experiment and pressurise the delivery of access
and to develop policies to further it. With regard to access,
the new integrated agency must do this.
9. However it is "finessed" publicly,
the new integrated agency will essentially be a merger of the
Countryside Agency and English Nature. Numerically, practically
and philosophically access will begin life within the new agency
as the poor relation—unless great attention is paid to the
way such an Agency is organised and led.
10. The devil is in the detail, almost none
of which is known at present. It is quite possible that the new
agency will be set up in a way whereby the RA's concerns are instantly
allayed. However, this is not yet clear. New legislation will
be necessary given that the "powers" of English Nature
are not sufficient when it comes to delivering the old Countryside
Agency remit. The composition of the new Board, the strategic
plan put into action by that Board, the size of the various departments
within the new agency, the management structure, the budgets allocated
to departments are all part of the "cocktail" that will
determine just how much attention is given to the many roles the
new agency will have to perform.
11. Plenty of reassuring noises have been
made by relevant people with regard to the "weighting"
to be given to access within the new agency. This is good as far
as it goes but the actions over the next few years are what really
counts.
12. The RA would be very happy to appear
before the Committee to give oral evidence.
8 September 2004
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