The Government has been attacked for pressing ahead with designating a high-standard access corridor around England’s coast through legislation, while skirting calls for arrangements for the paths’ maintenance.
Local highway authorities feared that the Marine and Coastal Access Bill would give them a new financial burden, because ministers have not promised any money for maintaining the proposed 2,300km of new or improved paths, despite calls from MPs to do so (Surveyor, 31 July).
The Government dodged the question of long-term maintenance as it introduced the Marine and Coastal Access Bill to the House of Lords, stating that this would be decided by an internal Natural England funding review.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs acknowledged in its assessment of costs that there would be an additional annual repair bill of £1.2M for the entire 4,500km-long new national trail.
Natural England is reviewing its provision of the bulk of the £4.1M annual cost of maintaining existing national trails such as the Pennine Way, Hadrian’s Wall Path, South Downs Way and the Thames Path. DEFRA has claimed that Natural England’s £50M estimate for the new corridor, to include ‘spreading room’ land – for picnics and recreation – was robust, even though the alignment is unknown.
This would include £14.7M for works to establish the corridor, which Natural England says will be to the same quality as other national trails, and £13M for ‘at least one full-time project officer’ in each of England’s 48 coastal authorities.
Geri Coop, executive officer of the Institute of Public Rights of Way, said a coastal access corridor was ‘a wonderful idea’ but was likely ‘to give walkers high expectations which cannot be fulfilled’. She added: ‘The “right to roam” legislation also sounded good, but it cost £69M, and few people are actually using that right. We’d have been better to get the existing rights of way, which people are using, into an acceptable condition.’ Around one-third of rights of way were not ‘available for use,’ said Coop.
Alan Feist, chair of the County Surveyors’ Society (CSS) countryside working group, said: ‘Natural England should continue funding to support national trails, new and old, as exemplar routes.’
He warned that sections of the trail the highway authorities were responsible for – existing rights of way – were more costly to maintain than other rights of way, given erosion. Under the Bill, the legal right to walk by the coast would remain, even if surfacing or steps had been lost. Feist said: ‘The automatic rolling back of the coastal corridor may not be easy to achieve in practice.’
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