Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to improve the safety and availability of public access to waterways for recreation and wellbeing.

The Government recognises the importance of providing access to the outdoors for people’s health and wellbeing and is working to ensure that this access is safe and appropriate. As part of this, Defra has committed in its new Environmental Improvement Plan to create 9 new National River Walks, one in every region of England. The Mersey Valley Way will be the first of those nine new walks.

Public access onto around 3,400 miles of our regulated inland waterways, including several of the larger rivers, is available through the licensing regimes of the navigation authorities that own or manage them. Defra is considering its approach to improving access onto unregulated inland waterways and is committed to working with stakeholders as this develops. The Environment Agency has published advice on how to stay safe while visiting waterways.