The Welsh Government’s 2017 Taking Forward Wales’ Management of Sustainable Resources consultation put forward 56 proposals relating to a diverse range of issues, including forestry, agriculture, public access and littering, and posed 40 questions.
On 4th April 2019, Hannah Blythyn AM, the Welsh Government’s Deputy Minister for Housing & Local Government, told the National Assembly for Wales that in response to the consultation she the Welsh Government intended, amongst other things, to:
- Introduce multi use paths (allowing cycling and horse riding on footpaths)
- Reduce the restrictions associated with open access land
- Lift the restrictions on cycling and horse riding, hang-gliding and paragliding, bathing or using a vessel or sailboard on natural bodies of water.
- Retain restrictions on use of manmade bodies of water, organised games and camping.
- Extend access land to the coast and cliffs
- Enable temporary diversions and exclusions to be applied across access land.
- Create a new type of public right of way - ‘cycle paths’
- Remove the anomaly that prevents organised cycling events on bridleways
- Enforce placing dogs on a short fixed length lead in the vicinity of livestock at all times of year
- Amend technical provisions around creating, diverting and extinguishing rights of way
- Allow more flexibility around livestock control
- Amend the requirement for a decadal review of access maps to a process of continual review
- Repeal some areas of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act that are proving costly and inefficient
- Change the role of Local Access Forums
The Welsh Government has since announced that three expert groups will be established to look at Changes to Open Access / CRoW Land, Flexibility on public paths and Communicating access rights.
The FUW has applied to sit on all three groups, but has made it clear that its views on access remain unchanged since the response to the 2017 consultation paper was submitted.
In particular, the FUW argues that the Welsh Government’s own statistics show that the massive increase in access to the countryside that has occurred since 2000, through the creation of new paths and open access legislation, has had no noticeable impact on public health, and that the focus should therefore be on encouraging responsible use of what’s already there rather than merely increasing access.