Meeting documents

Update from Dr Phil Wadey

Dr Phil Wadey was welcomed to the meeting.

Dr Wadey took Member through a Powerpoint presentation giving details about Systematic Research needed to meet the '2026 cut-off date' that would  extinguish highway rights over any rights of way that existed prior to 1949, if those rights have not been recorded.

The following key points were made.

·      There are 10 years and 6 months left until the cut-off date.

·      There are certain exceptions to this under the CROW provision although the draft regulations have not been received.

·      There are literally hundreds of unrecorded public rights of way in most counties.

·      From June 2012 – June 2013, Sport England (via the British Equestrian Federation) funded a BHS project to look at how to speed up path recording.  Hertfordshire and Somerset were the two pilot counties.

·      The suggested method for Systematic Research is; A. Build a List of Routes; B. Build the Research Library; C. Make DMMO Applications, but these phases are best conducted in parallel.

·      Potential routes can be located using a route-led approach such as looking at routes suspected as having higher rights; routes that look ‘suspicious’, routes remembered by older people in the area or missing current links shown on old maps, or

·      Selecting an area of interest such as a County, District, Parish, dividing the area and working through each area one at a time, looking for potential routes (the 1st edition 25" OS County Series grid works well) or

·      Systematic methology. Documents to check include;

o   old maps sold to the travelling public

o   Cassini reprints

o   Inland Revenue Valuation Maps

o   Ordnance Survey

o   Boundary records, object name books, 1st edition County series

o   Tithe Maps, Inclosure Awards

o   Railway, Canal, Major Road Records

During discussions, the following questions were asked and comments made.

On average, how many man hours would it take to carry out this work? In terms of the timescale for the work carried out in Hertfordshire, 25 days were spent in the National Archive office as well as several evenings typing up applications. During this time half of the county was covered and 50 applications were submitted, although the evidence was collected for another 100 routes for which application was made later on. A template can be used to record the areas covered and information found and therefore the documents would only have to be written about once.

Was there anything useful ascertained or areas of good practice identified from the work carried out during the Hampshire project? The reports from the Hampshire pilot are published on  http://pathh.hwtma.org.uk/.  There was good cross sector involvement in the pilot.  Priority setting took place in terms of submitting applications for paths that were the most useful.

There are some routes in Buckinghamshire which are across borders into neighbouring counties.  It is important to pass on details of such routes to volunteers and LAFs in the neighbouring areas, to make sure they do the work needed there too.

How are the different categorisations of roads and bridleways etc. in different counties taken into account when research is carried out? This varies from county to county.  The important thing is to collect the evidence for a route and see what status the evidence, as a whole, points to.

If a path is officially extinguished, can it be re-established? Official extinguishment means that only evidence post-dating the stopping is relevant. It is possible that although a route was stopped, use continued.  In this case, later evidence may have caused the route to be re-established.

How confident are you that parish councils are fully aware of the cut-off date? Parish councils need to be reminded of the cut-off date.  They have a lot of information that could be valuable.

Carrying out the research is not a 5 minute job – it can take years of research to look at a particular route. Getting into the Archives is the most time consuming part of the research.  The main point to make is whatever method of research is used should be done in a systematic way.

Archives are set out in a way which favours the parish by parish method of research.

What approach is the Hertfordshire Local Area Forum taking? The move is towards a multi user working party in conjunction with Rights of Way and the County Council.  Concern has been expressed about the amount of County Council officer time this will require in terms of co-ordinating volunteer work.

How much input has the Hertfordshire Local Access Forum had with Hertfordshire County Council officers?  Herts County Council has been contacted to clarify county boundaries and responsibilities. Apart from this, officers have only to process applications received. The ROW team have has also been helpful in terms of allowing access to any relevant maps they have.

Does training need to be arranged on the options and methods of research? Yes, training will be important.

What progress has Buckinghamshire made with this project? None so far, though applications are made on an ad hoc basis.  Two applications have been received from Alison Heath, BHS.

The Chairman thanked Dr Wadey for the very informative update.

Members of the Forum AGREED the following:

·      A letter will be sent to user groups asking them to nominate a representative to attend a meeting to discuss what work can be done

·      A letter is to be sent to parish councils advising them of the cut-off date for extinguishing rights of way.

Action: Jonathan Clark