Staff and Financial Resources

From GPG

Adequate funding must be available to support the preparation of the ROWIP. Two needs in particular which have been identified by the exemplar authorities are:

• Sufficient budget to enable local research to be undertaken to fill gaps in the authority's knowledge, develop a full understanding of its local rights of way network and check the relevance of national research findings to the local area.
• To provide for the costs of consultations and related publicity for the ROWIP. This can be expected to include extensive mail-outs to parish councils, community groups and other local interests; the costs associated with liaison and consultation meetings; those of publishing and making widely available the authority's assessment of its existing path network, and the draft and final versions of the improvement plan; and setting up and maintaining related web pages.

For most authorities, research will be needed to properly assess current and future use and demand for local rights of way (both amongst local residents and visitors to the area), the needs of different classes of path user, and the requirements of those with restricted mobility or other special needs and the potential of the network to meet those needs. These are all areas about which authorities currently have little or no information. At the same time, depending on the amount and quality of the information it holds, an authority may also need to carry out further research to fully assess, for example, the current condition of the path network, the likely extent of unrecorded rights of way in its area or other important local factors.

The experience of demonstration authorities is that a great deal of valuable information can be gained from sample surveys of local households, together with the use of focus group techniques to develop a more qualitative understanding of people's use of, and demands on, the path network. As noted already, each exemplar authority was grant-aided to undertake two such research projects, up to a maximum of £20,000 per project. As a rough guide an equivalent sum (ie around £40,000) should be set aside for local research over the plan-making period. However, much will depend on the amount, relevance and quality of the information already available and the extent to which the ROWIP is able to tap into existing omnibus survey programmes or citizens' panels at no cost to the ROWIP budget.

Considerable savings may also be possible by working in partnership with neighbouring authorities by jointly commissioning research and sharing the costs.