Coastal access

Natural England considers 4 ways to open up the coast.

03/09/2007

When a ‘right to roam’ was declared over large areas of moor and downland under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act (2000), improved access to the coast was left as an option by allowing the Secretary of State to widen the ‘open country’ definition to include it. Over the last 12 months, however, Natural England has come up with alternative plans on which Defra is now consulting. Essentially Natural England considered four alternate routes:

1. Use the powers under the Highways Act (1980) to create a network of new footpaths along the coast.
2. Use the latent powers in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act to map out coastal land where there would be rights of free access similar to moorland.
3. Negotiate a series of voluntary local access agreements with landowners, and use various grants to facilitate this.
4. Legislate to give Natural England new powers to create an access corridor around the English coast and a budget to implement a 10 year programme of infrastructure improvements.

For various reasons Natural England is arguing for solution number four. What it wants to do is to look at each section of coast in turn and then through discussion with local groups, decide how access can be improved and implemented. New paths, gates and stiles might be created, as well as new circular routes with links to public transport. Other facilities could be improved and backed by grants to landowners for other environmental measures. Natural England wants wildlife in this corridor to be enhanced and it hopes to use agri-environment measures to do this. Rolling intensively farmed land back from the coast is something it has in mind.

It thinks there should be little or no conflict with wildfowlers as it expects there to be no demand for access to estuary and salt marsh – in such areas it expects waterfowl to take precedence. Natural England believes that what it is asking for would cost £5m per year for 10 years. The people who lose out will be some landowners. Like upland access there will be no compensation and businesses that depend on their exclusive use of the coast will be hit, as will the values of properties that have private coast. Defra’s consultation closes on Tuesday 11 September.