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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to (a) improve access to the countryside and (b) ensure that footpath and green lanes are properly maintained.

The Government recognises the importance of providing access to the outdoors for people’s health and wellbeing and are working to ensure this is safe and appropriate. We committed in our Environmental Improvement Plan published on 31 January to work across government to help ensure that everyone lives within 15 minutes’ walk of a green or blue space.

The Government is delivering a number of policies to increase access to nature including:

• Delivering the £14.5m ‘Access for All’ programme, which consists of a package of targeted measures in our protected landscapes, national trails, forests and the wider countryside to make access to green and blue spaces more inclusive.
• 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.
• Delivering the £9m Levelling Up Parks Fund to improve green space in over 100 disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the UK.
• Designating Wainwright’s coast to coast route across the north of England as a National Trail.
• Our commitment to the provision of safe and appropriate public access in as many woodlands as possible as set out in the England Trees Action Plan. The recently published Environmental Improvement Plan reiterates our commitment to publish our ambition for improving the quantity, quality, and permanency of woodland access.
• Through programmes with the Community Forests and Forestry England we are enabling creation of large scale publicly accessible woodlands near towns and cities.
• We continue to support land managers to provide woodland access through our Countryside Stewardship (CS) and England Woodland Creation Offer (EWCO) schemes.
• Under the new Environmental Land Management (ELM) offer, for woodlands, we are providing societal benefits by bringing people closer to nature, allowing long term permissive access for recreation and contributing to the rural economy.

Local authorities are responsible for the management and maintenance of public rights of way including green lanes. Landowners are responsible for the maintenance of permissive paths. The UK Forestry Standard clearly states that existing rights of access must be respected and not obstructed. In England and Wales, responsible access must be allowed on mapped access land, including woodland dedicated under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, unless a Direction is in place to restrict or exclude access. All government supported planting, such as under our England Woodland Creation Offer (EWCO) and Countryside Stewardship Scheme, must comply with these requirements.