[Closed] Proposed Infrastructure Bill wed June 18th - consequences for rights of way

Thanks yunki. We live in worrying times so have signed the petition.

This angered me and would like to know what the ICO think of it:

[i]

You may be aware there is already a campaign against the privatisation of the Land Registry. Not only will it be privatised, the newly-private entity will have extra powers over who owns what land!

It's all up for sale I'm afraid.

New planning rules seem to be along the lines of:

Applicant: I want to build/knock down/dig up 'x'.
Planning department: Do you have loads of money?
Applicant: Yes.
Planning Department: Go ahead, then.

It's all up for grabs and the first thing they'll do is stick a bloody great fence around everything they own.

Back handers and bent politicians do it again! I have signed it, 1,911 signed so far need 2,000 signatures.

MUTDz

Yeah, more vested interests from the Tory shysters. 👿

need 2,000 signatures.

Need 10K or something.

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 [i]before[/i] 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?

Why haven't the Ramblers jumped on this?

I'm going to read this later but the point about FC land is that a lot of riding we do in FC forests is not on rights of way, but they let us do it because they have a mandate to encourage recreation (I think).

Over 2000 signatures now, but a new target of 3000.

Interesting. I will do some more digging on this. But the way that the British constitution is constructed is such that the Government can legislate for anything(the EU human rights etc legislation only applies because it is written into UK statute that it has supremacy over UK law - but equally could be written out, although I imagine with consequences to EU membership).

Therefore, just because the RoW legislation has been established over decades through common and statutory law does not mean that Parliament cannot change it - but they will have to be explicit and careful as it is likely to get legal challenge if passed.

I'd have thought the best way to oppose this would be through the Lords seeking amendments on RoW issues as a compromise for passing the bill. The Govt is more interested in getting more development/fracking land that maintaining a few RoW.

And as Molgrips says - the FC routes we use are not generally RoW - that is why we do not need to worry about walkers or horse riders.

TBH what would worry me more is random bits of Govt land being turned into housing estates/fracking sites without the proper planning processes

There is no such thing as the british constitution.

... yes there is. This is not a single document constitution as in America though, if that is what you mean.

There is no written yardstick against laws whixh can be measured in the American sense. The body of UK law can be judged against the HRA and ECHR but apart from that all constitutional law is based on a series of understandings; nothing more.

I don't want to get into a semantics discussion about what constitution means.

However the measure against which UK laws are made are the will of the people as exercised through democracy ie Parliament is supreme in all things statutory and statutory law sits above common law and convention - however Parliament (or at least the Commons) answers to the people through elections. EU etc law only applies because it has been given power through UK statute

The problem is not necessarily with way the UK constitution is formulated (written constitutions can have problems and can bog down democracies in outdated ideas) - it is the weakness of our democracy.

But all this does mean that Govts can get all sorts into statute and subsequent govts rarely amend.

Signed.

Also signed. When it's gone, it's gone.