<html>
<body>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">From: Kate Ashbrook
<hq@oss.org.uk><br>
<br><br>
<div align="center"><b>OPEN SPACES SOCIETY<br>
</b></div>
<br>
<div align="center"><b>NEWS RELEASE<br>
</b></div>
<br>
<b> <br>
</b><br>
<div align="center"><b>GOVERNMENT IGNORES PUBLIC ACCESS IN NEW FARM
PAYMENT-SCHEME<br>
</b></div>
<br>
The Open Spaces Society is dismayed that the government’s new,
post-Brexit, environmental land management scheme (ELMS),
<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sustainable-farming-incentive-how-the-scheme-will-work-in-2022">
published</a> today (2 December), fails to offer payments for public
access and paths on farmland. This is despite repeated commitments
from ministers, during the passage of the Agriculture Bill and
subsequently, that public access is a public good, to be funded through
agricultural payments.<br><br>
The document explains how the new Sustainable Farming Incentive,
replacing the Basic Payments Scheme, will operate.<br><br>
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, in a
speech to the Country Land and Business Association’s conference
<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/environment-secretary-speech-at-cla-conference-2-december-2021">
announced</a> that the new scheme needs to have clear policy outcomes,
which he then listed. Public access and enjoyment were not among
them.<br><br>
With other user groups, such as the Ramblers, British Mountaineering
Council, British Canoeing, and British Horse Society, the Open Spaces
Society has been
<a href="https://www.oss.org.uk/we-call-for-promotion-of-access-at-heart-of-future-agricultural-support/">
calling</a> for the agricultural funding system to pay for new and better
public access. Such access should be by the creation of routes to
help walkers, riders, cyclists and carriage drivers to avoid dangerous
roads, and to form circular paths with greater opportunities to explore
the countryside. Existing paths and access should also be improved,
with cross-field paths left unploughed, green lanes rolled, and rights of
way through grassland regularly mown. <br><br>
The society also argues that any landowner who blocks or abuses a public
path should have grant payments withdrawn, with a much more efficient
process than under the old regime, thereby deterring law-breaking and
helping the hard-pressed highway authorities. But there is not a
word from government about such common-sense enforcement
measures.<br><br>
Government pledged, in its 25-year environment plan of 2018, to make sure
that our natural environment ‘can be enjoyed, used by and cared for by
everyone’. The environment minister, Victoria Prentis, has
subsequently said that ELMS ‘will include payments to ensure those goods
can be delivered’a point which has been echoed many times in
parliament. Yet today’s big announcement on the future of ELMS says
not a word about this.<br><br>
Says Kate Ashbrook, the Open Spaces Society’s general secretary: ‘This is
a huge, missed opportunity to improve access and meet the targets in the
25-year environment plan, as well as to help with enforcement against
path-blocking. The government has failed lamentably to deliver on
its promises.<br><br>
‘We shall not give up, and shall keep pressing ministers to listen to all
those who want better access to our countryside.’<br><br>
<div align="right"><b>ENDS<br>
</b></div>
<br>
<b>Attached photograph: Colwall footpath 28 in Herefordshire. The
Open Spaces Society says that farmers should be rewarded for keeping
paths uncultivated.<br>
</b><br>
<b>Notes for editors<br>
</b><br>
1 The Open Spaces
Society was founded in 1865 and is Britain’s oldest national conservation
body. It campaigns to protect common land, village greens, open
spaces and public paths, and people’s right to enjoy them.<br><br>
<br><br>
_____________________________________________________________<br><br>
CONTACT: Kate Ashbrook:
<a href="mailto:kateashbrook@oss.org.uk">kateashbrook@oss.org.uk</a><br>
<br>
01491 573535 (work), <br>
</blockquote></body>
</html>