Issue - meetings

To consider a response to the Consultation Paper issued by DEFRA on a range of issues and proposals relating to changes to Rights of Way administrative processes

The Consultation Paper can be viewed on the Defra website - http://www.defra.gov.uk/consult/open

The Committee received a report on the DEFRA consultation “Improvements to the Policy and Legal Framework for Public Rights of Way”. 

The proposals in the consultation document would affect three areas of rights of way work – Definitive Map Modification Orders and the Definitive Map, Public Path Orders, and the relationship between planning consents affecting rights of way and any necessary consequential public path orders to allow development to proceed.

The principle proposals dealt with measures to bring the Definitive Map up to date and effectively ‘close it’ to the addition of new routes based on historical evidence.  To achieve this, the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 introduced a cut-off date, whereby after 25 years all rights of way already in existence in 1949 and not recorded on the definitive map and statement by 2026 would be extinguished, subject to the exceptions already provided by the Act. 

It had become apparent that completion of the definitive map and statement by 2026 would not be a viable proposition unless a streamlined approach to recording of public rights of way was adopted. In order to develop such an approach Natural England had established an independently chaired Stakeholder Working Group to develop a consensus amongst stakeholders, representing landowners, rights of way users and local authorities, about the best way forward. 

The Stakeholder Working Group had published a report “Stepping Forward” in March 2010 which contained a package of 32 proposals designed to improve various processes associated with identifying and recording historical rights of way.  The Defra consultation document set out how the Government intended to implement these proposals.

RESOLVED:

That the response to the Consultation, as set out in the “Details and Comments” column in the report, be approved.