I’m not 100% sure the current iteration of the Bill covers Rights of Way; certainly when it was the ‘Growth and Infrastructure Bill’ ~2013 there were concerns that the Bill meant less protection for RoWs if affected by developments (currently as per the Town and Countryside Planning Act), but protections under the Highways Act remained. From memory there was a specific ‘Rights of Way’ section of the Bill, which isn’t there now.
The idea was to divert / close RoW’s before planning permission was granted, instead of a is the case now sitting on your hands ready to start the development (possibly for months) waiting for the application to go through, which could end up being refused, which is a waste of time and money for everyone.
Strictly speaking RoW’s aren’t physical things so aren’t publically-owned (and therefore, in my opinion, not covered by the Bill); RoW’s are merely legal public rights ‘on top’ of privately-owned land. Although there are areas of land owned by councils / public bodies / etc which also have RoW on them, these then would be covered by the Bill as it stands.
Yes – as I’m sure someone will want to get picky – strictly speaking councils / highways authorities ‘own’ the surface of a RoW but only for purposes of their maintenance (so no permission is needed from whoever owns the land ‘underneath’) there is no legally-defined depth of ‘ownership’.
TBH unless I’m missing something obvious I’m not sure where he (as the line seems to be copied / pasted from a few other websites) arrives at “the proposed law allows any (RoW’s) to be extinguished”.
However, it’s certainly changed since I last looked at it ~18 months ago: –
A scheme may provide that transfers are to take effect irrespective of —
(a) any requirement to obtain a person’s consent or concurrence,
(b) any liability in respect of a contravention of another requirement, or
(c) any interference with an interest or right,
Holy cr*p! Fracking / HS2 free-for-all anyone?