Posted by Peter H on December 13, 2004 at 21:50:57 from 81.131.209.91 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Land access posted by Jim Hadfield on December 13, 2004 at 20:03:26:
Jim Hadfield should not worry about banging on about a topic – some of us do it all the time. However Jim must be prepared to submit his theories to examination.
Let's look at the Countryside & Rights of Way Act 2000. The right of access is given over what the Act calls ‘access land’. This includes registered common land, but the main definition is land ‘shown as open country on a map issued by the appropriate countryside body’. ‘Open country’ means land which ‘appears to the appropriate countryside body to consist wholly or predominantly of mountain, moor, heath or down’.
So it all depends on what the ‘appropriate countryside body’ decides. Who is this body? For England it is the ‘Countryside Agency’. Who are they? I visited their website. ‘The Countryside Agency is the statutory champion and watchdog working to make the quality of life better for people in the countryside, and the quality of the countryside better for everyone. Does that strike a chill into your heart? ‘Watchdog’ eh? Then it says ‘The Countryside Agency is funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)’.
In other words the authority which decides whether land is access land is government-funded. Hmm. Bit more to this than meets the eye, eh?
Now I don’t have any principled objection to government-funded bodies making decisions (it's democracy, after all), but what does worry me is some of the motivation which might occur and which we have seen a little of on Tarboard. Ie all this ‘Inclosure Act’ and landownership resentment. I dimly remember doing the Inclosure Acts in History at school. I have to say that I don’t give a toss about them. 300-400 years old and who cares? Why not go back to 1066 and get steamed up about the land the Normans pinched from the Saxons? No wonder the Americans laugh at us.