In a surprise move, DEFRA has announced that the 2026 cut-off date for recording historic rights of way, as set out in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, will be repealed. With such a backlog of rights of way applications within local councils, there was concern among many user groups that the 2026 deadline would see many historic access rights lost to an administrative process, rather than because of rational analysis.
A Defra spokesperson said:
“As we have recognised in our 25 Year Environment Plan, public access is key to connecting people with the environment to improve health and wellbeing.
“The Government has decided to take forward a streamlined package of measures in order to help enhance the way that rights of way are recorded and managed.”
The Defra statement reads:
‘We will repeal the 2026 cut-off date for recording historic rights of way, as set out in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, to allow more time for paths to be identified and added to the public rights of way network, as well as providing the ‘right to apply’ for landowners to divert or extinguish rights of way in certain circumstances. These measures, along with accompanying guidance, will be implemented as soon as reasonably practical.’
Cycling UK has long been working with other outdoors user groups to help raise awareness of the need to register ‘lost ways’. Sophie Gordon, off-road campaigns officer for Cycling UK said:
“It’s fantastic that the Government has listened to calls from lovers of the outdoors to scrap this arbitrary deadline, which put unnecessary pressure on volunteers striving to save their historic paths. English councils have such a backlog of claims to process that they are only adding an average of one historic bridleway a year to the map. We applaud the work of Ramblers and the British Horse Society in campaigning for the 2026 deadline to be repealed.
“However, with over 49,000 miles of potential unrecorded rights of way, relying on the efforts of volunteer researchers to dig through the archives was always unworkable. We need a more proactive focus from Government on how to improve and link up our rights of way network to reflect how they are being used today, to enable more people to explore the countryside – whether by bike, on horseback or on foot.”
The recently created West Kernow Way route uses paths which are stuck in the backlog of applications for recording. How many more routes might be possible if these historic trails could be reclaimed and recorded for riders?
The repeal of the 2026 deadline is a huge step forward, but the question of how and when historic access rights might be recorded remains. It’s probably too much to hope that it all becomes so much of an administrative headache that someone in Government decides a copy and paste of Scotland’s laws would be easier…
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