PeterNatt
Well-Known Member
OPEN SPACES SOCIETY
NEWS RELEASE
GOVERNMENT IGNORES PUBLIC ACCESS IN NEW FARM PAYMENT-SCHEME
The Open Spaces Society is dismayed that the government’s new, post-Brexit, environmental land management scheme (ELMS), published today (2 December), fails to offer payments for public access and paths on farmland. This is despite repeated commitments from ministers, during the passage of the Agriculture Bill and subsequently, that public access is a public good, to be funded through agricultural payments.
The document explains how the new Sustainable Farming Incentive, replacing the Basic Payments Scheme, will operate.
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, in a speech to the Country Land and Business Association’s conference announced that the new scheme needs to have clear policy outcomes, which he then listed. Public access and enjoyment were not among them.
With other user groups, such as the Ramblers, British Mountaineering Council, British Canoeing, and British Horse Society, the Open Spaces Society has been calling for the agricultural funding system to pay for new and better public access. Such access should be by the creation of routes to help walkers, riders, cyclists and carriage drivers to avoid dangerous roads, and to form circular paths with greater opportunities to explore the countryside. Existing paths and access should also be improved, with cross-field paths left unploughed, green lanes rolled, and rights of way through grassland regularly mown.
The society also argues that any landowner who blocks or abuses a public path should have grant payments withdrawn, with a much more efficient process than under the old regime, thereby deterring law-breaking and helping the hard-pressed highway authorities. But there is not a word from government about such common-sense enforcement measures.
Government pledged, in its 25-year environment plan of 2018, to make sure that our natural environment ‘can be enjoyed, used by and cared for by everyone’. The environment minister, Victoria Prentis, has subsequently said that ELMS ‘will include payments to ensure those goods can be delivered’—a point which has been echoed many times in parliament. Yet today’s big announcement on the future of ELMS says not a word about this.
Says Kate Ashbrook, the Open Spaces Society’s general secretary: ‘This is a huge, missed opportunity to improve access and meet the targets in the 25-year environment plan, as well as to help with enforcement against path-blocking. The government has failed lamentably to deliver on its promises.
‘We shall not give up, and shall keep pressing ministers to listen to all those who want better access to our countryside.’
NEWS RELEASE
GOVERNMENT IGNORES PUBLIC ACCESS IN NEW FARM PAYMENT-SCHEME
The Open Spaces Society is dismayed that the government’s new, post-Brexit, environmental land management scheme (ELMS), published today (2 December), fails to offer payments for public access and paths on farmland. This is despite repeated commitments from ministers, during the passage of the Agriculture Bill and subsequently, that public access is a public good, to be funded through agricultural payments.
The document explains how the new Sustainable Farming Incentive, replacing the Basic Payments Scheme, will operate.
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, in a speech to the Country Land and Business Association’s conference announced that the new scheme needs to have clear policy outcomes, which he then listed. Public access and enjoyment were not among them.
With other user groups, such as the Ramblers, British Mountaineering Council, British Canoeing, and British Horse Society, the Open Spaces Society has been calling for the agricultural funding system to pay for new and better public access. Such access should be by the creation of routes to help walkers, riders, cyclists and carriage drivers to avoid dangerous roads, and to form circular paths with greater opportunities to explore the countryside. Existing paths and access should also be improved, with cross-field paths left unploughed, green lanes rolled, and rights of way through grassland regularly mown.
The society also argues that any landowner who blocks or abuses a public path should have grant payments withdrawn, with a much more efficient process than under the old regime, thereby deterring law-breaking and helping the hard-pressed highway authorities. But there is not a word from government about such common-sense enforcement measures.
Government pledged, in its 25-year environment plan of 2018, to make sure that our natural environment ‘can be enjoyed, used by and cared for by everyone’. The environment minister, Victoria Prentis, has subsequently said that ELMS ‘will include payments to ensure those goods can be delivered’—a point which has been echoed many times in parliament. Yet today’s big announcement on the future of ELMS says not a word about this.
Says Kate Ashbrook, the Open Spaces Society’s general secretary: ‘This is a huge, missed opportunity to improve access and meet the targets in the 25-year environment plan, as well as to help with enforcement against path-blocking. The government has failed lamentably to deliver on its promises.
‘We shall not give up, and shall keep pressing ministers to listen to all those who want better access to our countryside.’
