Thank you for contacting me about access to nature.
England already has world-leading access to nature–with some 120,000 miles of access through our countryside, but we are taking steps to improve this further. We are delivering the £14.5 million ‘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 accessible.
More than £3.5 million has already been spent on making our protected landscapes more accessible, including on creating and improving footpaths to ensure that the countryside is accessible to everyone. We are also improving the way in which rights of way are recorded by implementing a package of reforms to reduce bureaucracy and speed up the process for new rights of way to be added to the legal record for everyone to enjoy.
Local highway authorities are responsible for the management and maintenance of existing public rights of way and are required to keep a Rights of Way Improvement Plan to plan improvements to the rights of way network in their area. This must include an assessment of the local rights of way including the condition of the network.
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. This means that the public already has the ‘right to roam’ over many areas of wild, open countryside. We have no plans to change this.