Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000

What a Labour government would mean for the right to roam

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, August 31, 2023
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The Labour Party has promised to introduce a Scottish-style right to roam over the English and Welsh countryside if elected to government.

Key Points: 
  • The Labour Party has promised to introduce a Scottish-style right to roam over the English and Welsh countryside if elected to government.
  • How might that change your ability to enjoy the great outdoors and what lessons does Scotland offer?
  • While the landowner lost on appeal and the right to camp was restored, the right to camp still applies only to common land in Dartmoor National Park.

Labour and the right to roam

    • The history of the Labour Party and the right to roam are heavily entwined.
    • His government introduced a new right to roam under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 (CRoW Act).
    • These compromises weakened the new right to roam, which was not extended to more accessible lowland areas, other farmland or woodland.
    • Opponents to a wider right to roam often cite the risk to the environment, farming and the privacy of landowners.

What can be learned from Scotland?

    • This was until the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 introduced a generous and sweeping right to roam.
    • This simplifies access rights and removes the need for complex signage and maps full of dead ends and no-go areas.
    • The Scottish Land Reform Act makes an explicit connection between wider access and cultural heritage.
    • And in truth, the people of Scotland have always enjoyed more generous rights of access through traditions and practice.

Your favourite walk may have an expiry date

Retrieved on: 
Monday, April 17, 2023
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Each path is recorded and maintained by local authorities across the UK to ensure they remain open, unobstructed and free for all to use.

Key Points: 
  • Each path is recorded and maintained by local authorities across the UK to ensure they remain open, unobstructed and free for all to use.
  • Groups campaigning for greater public access to the countryside have been trying to find and register these paths so they can be used in perpetuity.
  • Any paths which were not officially recorded after this deadline would be lost to the public.

Demystifying the ‘definitive’ map

    • All public rights of way in England and Wales are recorded in the definitive map and statement, which is the legal record maintained by local authorities.
    • Definitive maps were first introduced in 1949 as part of a post-war planning boom.
    • Despite the optimism of Clement Attlee’s Labour government, the task has proven to be complex and interminable for local authorities.

The path ahead

    • While this feels like a loss for access campaigners, the five-year extension to the original 2026 deadline would appear to strike a compromise, at least from the government’s point of view.
    • The government has cited COVID-19 as justification for the five-year delay, but the problem is more deep-rooted.
    • Labour certainly thinks so – but before it can implement any new settlement, the party will have to win a general election.
    • Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue.