Got an email in about this just now - I signed the petition for trail recognition in Wales and this seems to be a next phase similar to that but in England.
https://action.cyclinguk.org/page/68755/action/1?locale=en-GB
Oops think I deleted that email earlier thanks for the link. 👍
I've done my bit locally.
As someone who has both worked in a Highways dept investigating old databases of forgotten council roads, at the same time representing mountainbikers at Welsh Gov level I have to repeat what was said about the then CTC by the head of another access agency. " They're away with the fairies".
In 2003 or thereabouts I was asked to work as a researcher investigating lost rights of way. The government ran a trial scheme for a year, didn't manage to disinter a single route and was wound up. Gloucester University decided to walk away from the subsequent mess and I was never taken on.
Nearly every council no longer has the resources to do anything proactive in this matter, without ring fenced government funding. which the Gov doesn't do. Most funding evaporated after the financial crash of 2007. I stopped getting council PROW survey contracts then. Departments had their budgets slashed and staff were let go. Covid and Brexit are going to further impoverish things and anyway in any rural area the councillors are landowners and put immense pressure on stopping such initiatives.
I recently was asked to fight a MMO case which involved adding a route to the PROW list as a BOAT. It had taken Herefordshire Council about 30 years to respond to the request. That's perfectly normal. The case took three years and failed. I was actually opposing it, just for a change.
As all routes submitted via CUK will have to go through the same MMO procedure, assuming any of them pass the test for consideration as a MMO [Map Modification Order], this is about as realistic as expecting us to be better off immediately after Brexit, or pigs flying.
Cloggy I don't have your experience but what you say chimes with what I've seen in trying to get routes confirmed or reopened. And it's all councils can do to keeep thier heads above water.
But I don't think that means bikers (pedal!), horse riders and walkers shoulds top asking. Isn't the problem the absolute deadline set for all this? 2025?? So we can't keep chipping away for years.
And I agree CTC/Cycling UK are often off with the fairies. A few pop up cycle lanes during lockdown 1 and they have completely lost thier heads.
The problem is that by window dressing CUK are making it less likely to get a route adopted.
As far as I understand it there are only two ways of getting a new route added. The standard one is an MMO. If you follow the pathetic CUK advice you merely put forward a route for consideration by a council, should they be minded and able to follow it up with an MMO themselves. A properly put together MMO by a member of the public forces them to respond. There's a world of difference.
Thus if we follow CUKs procedure we are almost certainly condemning that route to obscurity compared with if we follow proper procedure which at least gives a chance of eventual success.
The other route is an adoption by the council. Something that is often done for new housing estates. That requires purchase of land, in our context a compulsory purchase order I'd say. So without ring fenced gov funding specifically for that purpose that's not going to happen. Councils are financially stressed to the limit. Some have gone bust.
There are no short cuts. There is a 2026 cut off date or the submission of new or uprated routes [MMOs]
What CUK puts forward benefits themselves but not us. It's garbage.