Issue - meetings

To consider a report on the work planning targets and current workload of the Public Rights of Way Team for the forthcoming year. 

The Committee considered a report which briefed them on the work planning targets and current workload of the Public Rights of Way Team for the forthcoming year.

The work undertaken by the Rights of Way Team fell into three areas of work:

• Protection and maintenance of the network
• Development of access and production and implementation of the Rights of Way Improvement Plan
• The processing of legal orders associated with changes to the path network

Members noted the Appendices to the Report, which outlined the work programme for the Network Management Team, listed the projects undertaken in 2008/09 as part of the Rights of Way Improvement Plan and detailed the outstanding workload for definitive map and legal orders work.

It was noted that the Rights of Way Team had been operating towards targets for 2008/09 set by the Cheshire County Council Rights of Way Committee in April 2008.  The targets had been set in the context of the former Countryside Agency (now Natural England) National Targets for public rights of way, which had as their aim that the rights of way network in England and Wales should be:

• Legally defined
• Properly maintained
• Well publicised

These targets would remain as the targets for Cheshire East. 

Although Councils were no longer required to report on Best Value Performance Indicator 178 (the percentage of PROW network deemed “easy to use”), the national group, the County Surveyors’ Society is keen that authorities continue to collect this data and in Cheshire it had been collected as local indicator LTP 13.  This performance indicator would continue as a means of benchmarking progress and the first of two annual random surveys for Cheshire East would be implemented by the team in June.

RESOLVED:

That the “Milestones” approach to setting work programme targets and gathering local performance indicators be endorsed and the workload of the Public Rights of Way Team be noted.