Earl of Lytton
Main Page: Earl of Lytton (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, on securing this debate, and declare my interests as a landowner, a Local Government Association vice-president, a property professional and chairman of a body known as the Rights of Way Review Committee. I pay tribute to those who attend that committee’s meetings to seek consensus, despite some opposed standpoints, but I have to say that our work is on hold. At a risk of covering things that have been raised already, here I will express my personal views.
My starting point is to affirm the importance of our rights-of-way system to users and, perhaps not so obviously, to the businesses—mine included—that provide services along the way. It is a critical social and national tourist asset, with no better recommendation of its importance than that contained in the report Stepping Forward and the simplification proposals that followed in 2012.
It is self-evident that not all of the network is useful or convenient. Despite significant advances, it suffers from underfunding, poor conditions, bad signage, discontinuity, inadequacy for the range of current users and a sclerotic legal structure. The equally obvious need for policy consensus is still hampered by polarised views, conflict and lengthy arguments, the tragic and avoidable ruination of some rights, and the deprivation of rights for others—this is all sucking resources from other important work. Local authorities are still forced into costly technical battles based not on current or future needs but often on claimed usage from long ago, when people walked to work or church and drove their livestock to market. Yet that remains the basis of the lost ways and many such definitive map modifications that follow: hence the need for some sort of cut-off.
Caseloads grow, partly, as we have heard, because some post-1949 work incorporated errors and omissions. It was also not flexible enough to meet modern requirements, never mind the local government spending constraints. Seemingly only in the national parks do rights of way have adequate priority or anywhere near appropriate management or funding. This does not translate into modern green commuting, safe routes to school, or facilities for urban fringe dwellers; nor does it cater for—or segregate, for that matter—the wide range of recreational users of our linear routes and open access areas, let alone for people with infants in buggies or mobility scooters.
My insights do not reveal an easy way forward. Genuinely held viewpoints are too often based on narrow, inflexible principles that stand in the way of compromise, often to the point where conceding anything becomes an existential threat to its proponents. This drains the lifeblood from reasoned dialogue on the future and stagnates progress. The huge costs of implementing the CROW Act 2000 and the disproportionately small results on the ground are another case in point. Yet there is space enough in this realm to satisfy reasonable aspirations if we could bypass dirigiste principles and obduracy, with their huge costs and delays, and replace the concept of rights with one of consensual facility.
The object must surely be to protect and enhance the best of our rights-of-way system, rationalise and improve coherence, avoid conflicts, and allow routes to be amended or created, with redundant ones being closed. Even after the cut-off, the lodged claims to date will still need to be dealt with, and it is arguable that the definitive modification arrangements are no longer fit for purpose. Failing movement on the Deregulation Act 2015 proposals, might it not be better if it was all taken out of its legalistic arena and put in the sole control of some other non-partisan statutory body with a remit based on need, network coherence, fair balance, conflict reduction and cost benefit? Much of the private and taxpayers’ money spent on historical research and public inquiries might then be directed to infrastructure improvements, eliminating the more severe landowner risks and doing a power of good for the general public, tourism and the economy.