Those who know much about rights of way, may be interested in a case that was decided today in the Supreme Court (formally the Law Lords). On a technicality that was disguised as a case about map scales but in reality was not about that. It was about being able to challenge the ‘Winchester Case’ which if that point of law was proven (which it was not), would have opened up nearly a thousand routes to use by motorbikes.

http://www.gleam-uk.org/contentious-issues/winchester-case-trf-dreams-shattered-as-minor-victory-narrowly-won-in-dorset-case/

C

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/psa-for-dorset-riders

What you mean to use the routes motorbikes use to use before 2006 law came in.How many motorbikes you see greenlaning these days anyway.The funny thing about that law its meant there is so many enduros and fun events on private land and practice tracks around these days which are far more fun than riding graded trails which are springing up all over the country namely the Peaks.Hay Ho everybody to there own.

I’m not quite sure why GLEAM thinks this case would “(be) an unmitigated disaster for the countryside” as it only related to 5 individual applications (Para 1, last sentence) that were rejected on the basis of the supporting maps being of a questionable scale.

It’s certainly not going to overturn Section 67 of NERC.

I’ve always considered that the reason for rejecting the applications was unreasonable and particularly hypercritical – even for us RoW types – and it certainly falls within what I’d consider de minimis.

In short, the TRF enlarged a 50k map extract so as to be to 25k, but the Authority said “no, that map isn’t ‘drawn to a scale of not less than 1:25,000’ because it’s a ‘computer generated enlargement'”. I’ve seen supporting maps drawn by hand in pencil; as long as the route / features in question are unambiguous then the map shouldn’t be a problem.

[edit]

AIUI Dorset didn’t tell the TRF right away that they thought the maps were non-compliant – they waited until after the time limit had expired, so that the “error” could not be corrected, which is doubly-naughty.