Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether she plans to take steps to extend the right to roam to (a) woodlands, (b) watersides and (c) more downland; and if she will make a statement.

The Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 provides for a right to roam across open access land, giving the public a right of access to most areas of mountain, moor, heath, down, registered common land and coastal margin. We have no plans to change this. England has a fantastic network of footpaths and the public has the ‘right to roam’ over many areas of wild, open countryside

We are working to complete the England Coast Path which, at around 2,700 miles, will be the longest waymarked and maintained coast walking route in the world. Over 2,000 miles have now been approved as England Coast Path, with nearly 800 miles already open. It will also create 250,000 hectares of new open access land within the coastal margin. We will also be creating a new National Trail across the North of England

We do not plan to mandate that new woodlands have public access or introduce a right to roam across all woodlands. In the England Trees Action Plan, we committed to the provision of safe and appropriate public access in as many woodlands as possible through a suite of measures from updating Forestry Commission guidance through to plans to encourage improvements to the quality and permanency of existing access. This will include how we might support greater access for all abilities. We will also encourage more access provision through our woodland creation grants. We recently amended the England Woodland Creation Offer to offer a higher incentive for the provision of access to new woodlands, and made more applicants eligible to apply for funding for access.

We recognise that when open access land was originally mapped and new rights over it introduced in 2004-5, not all downland was mapped satisfactorily. We have already announced our intention to carry out a review of those maps, and work has begun to plan for this review. As part of the review, we will aim to improve our mapping of the downland landform, which is likely to mean that more areas of downland are identified and will become subject to access rights.