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.
The Impact of CRoW Act on RoW Sections
Up to the year 2000 the role of most RoW sections was clear cut - they dealt with Public Rights of Way ! Most of those were definitive paths of one category or another. Occasionally one dealt with a claim that some route not on the definitive map should be put on it, and some sections also dealt with unsurfaced routes which (technically) had 'road' status. The rest of 'access' was somebody else's problem.
Yet out there in the countryside were areas of Urban Common with access rights, there were areas of land where access was allowed in exchange for agricultural grants, there was 'customary access' (whatever that was), strange things called Ratione Tenurae roads where people could go, local authority owned land open to the public, permissive paths, and several other categories where it was believed people walked. In practice, the user public didn't see those distinctions - they just wanted to walk.
But the Act has now opened up extensive areas of moor, mountain, heath and down. Arrangements had to be made to ensure walkers can get into those areas, somebody had to sort out entry points and even create entirely new lengths of path to gain access in some cases. In many cases the new Access Land is being cared for by a different team of officers to those managing RoW.
But the implications for the RoW team can be dramatic. Suddenly an old RoW which went nowhere in particular becomes a major access to a very attractive area of Access Land. The use of it increases dramatically, but the condition of it is unsuitable for its new purpose. So, as walkers use RoW differently in conjunction with the new access facilities, whole patterns of path use can, and probably will, change in some areas.
It's unlikely that the walking public will treat CRoW Act access as a separate issue to everything that went before, so should local government systems revise themselves to cater for the new situations? Perhaps it's time to look at RoW Sections and their paths as being just one aspect of a wider public access network. Does this mean that RoW, Access Land and all those other strange forms of access in paragraph two should be integrated, and all looked after by one team - Access Units ?
The text below discusses how the different authorities involved in the ROWIP exemplar project addressed team structures.
Effective Team Structures in relation to ROWIP delivery
Allocating responsibility - appointing a dedicated ROWIP officer
Preparing a rights of way improvement plan in accordance with the Secretary of State's guidance is a significant undertaking. The experience of the demonstration authorities was invariably that it took far longer and required a much greater effort than they originally anticipated.
A further key lesson to emerge from the demonstration programme was a dedicated officer is required in order to properly investigate and assess the existing path network, its use for different journey purposes and the needs of different classes of path user. He or she must be given clear, overall responsibility for the improvement plan, sufficient time to focus on the tasks involved, and the support of senior management. Among the exemplar authorities, six were able to make such an appointment.
Given the long timescale that the completion of a full ROWIP is likely to take and the subsequent need to ensure that the plan is implemented and monitored, the post should ideally be seen as a permanent rather than a temporary appointment. The minimum period of time for which an appointment should be made is three years.
The experience of the exemplar authorities that have not made a dedicated appointment has shown that it is extremely difficult to fit in the substantial amount of work that is required alongside the rights of way officer's existing duties and responsibilities and that, typically, the only way to cope is to ignore the officers routine, day-to-day duties, often for a long period of time. These duties and responsibilities are already likely to be increased significantly by other provisions in Parts I and II of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 Act. To expect the rights of way officer to also take on responsibility for what is an important, statutory plan is unlikely to be viable in most authorities.
Of those demonstration authorities that have appointed a dedicated ROWIP officer, most have brought together a number of the new responsibilities under the CROW Act into a single post. Typically, as well as leading the preparation of a ROWIP, the officer has been responsible for setting up and running the authority's Local Access Forum (LAF) and, in some cases, for dealing with issues relating to access to land under Part I of the 2000 Act. This has generally worked well and is recommended as a sensible and pragmatic arrangement. However, the timetabling of the different tasks needs to be carefully coordinated if conflicts are to be avoided. (Such difficulties that did arise were mainly caused by the very tight timetable the exemplar authorities were asked to work to and because the job of setting up the LAF had to be undertaken at the same time and was also more time consuming than was expected.)
Ensuring support throughout the authority
While it is important that there is a single officer whose job it is to take charge of the ROWIP, he or she must also have a network of support across the highway authority. It is essential that:
A member of the middle or senior management takes responsibility both for overseeing the ROWIP process and for championing the ROWIP at a senior level throughout the authority.
Staff who are involved in the day-to-day work of recording, managing and maintaining rights of way set aside sufficient time to input into the ROWIP process and advise the ROWIP officer as and when it is necessary to do so. Up to 10% of their time should be set aside for these purposes.
The ROWIP officer has adequate administrative and technical support. The tasks for which help will be required include:
- setting-up a wide range of liaison and consultation meetings
- letting and managing appropriate research contracts
- handling mail-outs
- indexing and organising the large amount of data the process can be expected to generate, include setting up and maintaining a simple computer database
sending out, and handling the responses to, formal and informal consultations
arranging on-going publicity including maintaining any relevant web pages
dealing with day-to-day inquiries (from path user groups, parish councillors, farmers, landowners and members of the public).
Those authorities with a geographical information system (GIS) should also ensure that assistance is available to input the additional data arising from the ROWIP research into the system and to prepare overlays.
The officers responsible for the plans and strategies for related areas of work that must be taken into account in the ROWIP and which, in turn, should themselves reflect the improvement plan must also be made aware of the preparation of the improvement plan and the timetable that is being followed. These include staff responsible for the Local Transport Plan and those (whether in the highway authority or other local authorities for the area), dealing with the Community Strategy and the Structure and Local Plans for the area, and those responsible for healthy living, leisure, recreation, sport and tourism.
The experience of the exemplar authorities is that it can be expected to take a minimum of 12 months to develop a dialogue with these officers and for them to 'get up to speed' with the improvement plan. Many will not have previously considered the role of the rights of way network in relation to their own subjects or responsibilities, or the contribution that these in turn might make to the aims of the improvement plan.
Budget
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 authorities 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.
Timetabling and monitoring arrangements
It is a requirement of the legislation that the highway authority must complete its first ROWIP by November 2007. It is important that a timetable is drawn up to ensure the authority is able to meet this deadline and that monitoring arrangements are also put in place so as to keep track of the progress it is making. At the same time, these arrangements will help to make sure that adequate financial resources are allocated, such as those needed to carry out related research, and to keep track of the take-up of this expenditure.
At a minimum, the senior member of staff responsible for ROWIP and any steering or management group that has been established should receive regular reports of the progress being made against the targets the authority has set itself, so that if necessary early remedial action can be taken.
The tasks set out in the Defra guidance can be used to help to draw up a timetable of work involved in preparing the ROWIP and to identify key monitoring targets. But the authority should not expect to be able to follow the 'stages' in the Defra guidance in a strict, linear sequence. The experience of the demonstration authorities is that the development of improvement plan is more of an iterative process. For example, evaluation of the first tranche of information the authority gathers will often give rise to additional questions, needing further research. Similarly, although it may be useful as a working hypothesis to make an initial evaluation of the opportunities provided by the existing path network and the extent to which it meets the needs of the public, this should be kept under review and revised as the authority's understanding of the situation develops. It follows, therefore, that the timetable and monitoring targets should themselves be flexible and capable of being updated in the light of experience, as and when it is necessary to do so.
Handing the information and data that will be generated
The information gathering and assessments needed to prepare the ROWIP can be expected to generate a very large amount of data and other material; so much so that many of the demonstration authorities found that it is easy to get swamped or to suffer an 'information overload'. They key to avoiding this is to plan at the outset how the information will be handled and to set up an efficient filing system. Several of the authorities have suggested, with hindsight, that it would be worthwhile setting us a simple computer database to organise and manage the data.
The demonstration authorities also found that even after the process of pro-actively gathering information had been completed, new information continued to arise which it was important to take into account and which had therefore to be recorded.
Partnership working by smaller authorities
The requirement to prepare a ROWIP may pose the greatest difficulty for those unitary authorities with a limited rights of way network and a small rights of way team. However the importance of rights of way in what are often predominately urban or urban fringe areas is highlighted by two factors; the very short trip distance for most recreational day visits and the increasing importance of rights of way for short utilitarian journeys. The UK Day Visits Surveys have consistently found, for example, that around one in six of all day visits takes place within 1 mile of home, and that nearly a half of all visits involve a round-trip distance of less than 5 miles. This in turn emphasises the importance of rights of way in urban fringe areas, close to where people live. Similarly, the growing utilitarian use of rights of way for short journeys to work, school or the shops as an alternative to the use of the car again emphasises the importance of peoples' local path networks.
The experience of the City of York, where the 2-person ROW team has successfully produced an exemplar Rights of Way improvement plan, shows that it is entirely possible for a small unitary authority to meet the new requirements working on its own. But it will often be preferable for smaller neighbouring authorities to work together in partnership by preparing a joint plan - as in the case of the 5 ex-Tyne and Wear metropolitan authorities that have come together to prepare an exemplar plan under the leadership of Sunderland. The partnership builds on the earlier precedent in developing a joint LTP and is considered by the authorities to be more efficient and to have other significant advantages.
While it is necessary for one of the partner authorities to take the lead and to coordinate the overall plan, it is also important that all of the partner authorities contribute and that the work is shared out fairly, without imposing an undue burden on just one authority. In the case of the Tyne and Wear partnership the work had to be fitted in alongside the lead officer's day-to-day work on rights of way. But it was recognised from the outset that the ideal would be to jointly appoint a dedicated ROWIP officer with the costs shared between the partner authorities. This is now being pursed through the appointment of an officer whose role will be to further develop and help implement the improvement plan across the five partnership authorities.
Another approach for a single, small unitary authority may be to work in partnership with its neighbouring county authority. There may be scope, for example, for the two authorities to work together in jointly assessing the path network and use and demand for rights of way in the area (especially where this reflects the public's uses of the whole area for recreation or where there is already a joint LAF), to share the cost of other local research or to develop joint policies, while still preparing separate improvement plans.
Scope for contracting out the preparation of a ROWIP
A further solution that has been suggested to the problems faced by many smaller authorities is for preparation of its ROWIP to be contracted out. The experience of the exemplar authorities however, is against this option.
It has become clear, for example, that the improvement plan requires close working relationships to be established over a period of time both with colleagues elsewhere in the authority and in a range of partner organisations, to ensure that the ROWIP can be closely coordinated with other plans and strategies. The preparation of the plan also requires a full appreciation of the underlying culture and methods of working of the authority and a detailed knowledge of the local path network. All of these factors militate against putting the development of the improvement plan, as such, out to contract.
On the other hand, the demonstration projects have shown there is a need in many areas for additional research for which it will often be appropriate to employ consultants, particularly where this requires specialist skills which are beyond the competence of the improvement plan officer. Designing and carrying out household surveys and focus groups interviews are two such areas where specialist skills are essential.
Some other aspects of the work too might be successfully undertaken by consultants or put out to contract, thereby reducing pressure on the ROWIP officer but this has to be balanced against the a loss of knowledge or understanding which may arise as a result of the work being carried out by a third party.
Networking within and between authorities and other bodies
If the full integration of the ROWIP with other plans and strategies is to be achieved it is important that all those who are responsible for those plans and strategies are made aware of the intention to prepare a rights of way improvement plan, the timetable that is being followed and how the improvements to rights of way might relate to their own interests and responsibilities.
For at least one of the exemplar authorities it is the ability of the ROWIP officer to network within and across authorities - to sell the improvement plan and persuade others to take it fully into account in their own agenda - that is the key requirement of the post, over and above any technical or legal knowledge of rights of way. A number of authorities have also made the point that it takes time to build up a network of contacts and establish good working relationships. Although the preparation of the exemplar plans was been artificially condensed into a few months, ideally up to a year should be allowed to prepare the ground for the improvement plan, build-up relationships and give time for other to "get up to speed".
Building up this network will mean involving people, both in other sections of the highway authority and in other organisations, who may have little or no previous knowledge of rights of way. They may be unaware of, or sceptical about, the value and importance of the path network or simply not have thought about how it could help them to achieve their own objectives. Inevitably, many of these people will also be busy and may initially be reluctant to give the issues of the improvement plan the time that it deserves. It is worthwhile, therefore, taking time at the outset to think through how the ROWIP officer should go about presenting the intention to prepare an improvement plan to other people.
Internal networking within the highway authority
As well as making direct contact with staff in other sections of the authority who are known to have an interest in the improvement plan, such as those responsible for the LTP, it is helpful for the improvement plan timetable and the purpose of the plan to be widely publicised throughout the authority. This will enable those who have a less obvious connection with the path network or whose interest in it may not be known to the ROWIP officer to come forward. In the case of Dorset, for example, publicity was given to the ROWIP in the authority's corporate magazine and on its web site. Copies of the vision document, produced for the Local Access Forum and which highlighted the importance of the improvement plan, were also sent to all Departments.
Developing external relations
Externally, the aim should similarly be to generate awareness of the improvement plan process and the opportunities that the plan may present among as wide a range of potential partners as possible. In addition to any district councils for the area and the neighbouring highway authorities, the bodies that should be made aware of the intention to prepare an improvement plan include, for example, any national parks, AONB or Community Forest projects for the area, major landowners such as the National Trust and Forestry Commission, and bodies such as the Health Education Trust and Regional Tourism Council.
Although it takes time and effort to do so, there are clear advantages in coordinating the improvement plan with other relevant initiatives and strategies. These include, for example, ensuring that the improvement plan is fully coordinated with the Community Strategy, that it also accords with any local plans for the area, the cultural strategy and the local planning authority's strategy for open spaces, sports and recreation facilities developed under PPG 17.
Steering and management groups
Although not all of the demonstration authorities established a formal steering or management group, such groups can be seen with hindsight as a key part of the improvement plan process, enabling all those involved in the improvement plan to come together to exchange information and ideas, and to review, coordinate and monitor overall progress. The existence of a group will also help to reinforce the status and importance of the improvement plan within the authority, especially if it is chaired by a senior officer, and to break-down the isolation that the ROWIP officer might otherwise be working in.
A variety of arrangements were adopted in practice. For example:
Hampshire and Nottinghamshire both had two groups; one meeting regularly to steer the project and review and discuss progress in detail, the other meeting on an occasional basis and taking a more strategic overview.
Hampshire's two groups were both small; the ROWIP Working Group being limited to the staff directly involved with the improvement plan, and the Management Group having just three additional members (the Chair of the LAF, the Councillor responsible for the ROWIP and an officer of the Countryside Agency). In contrast, the parallel ROWIP Pilot Steering Group in Nottinghamshire has a membership of 10, including the Transportation Officer responsible for the LTP, the district council's local plan officers, the RA County Footpath Secretary and BHS County Bridleways Officer. Similarly, the county's Stakeholder Group has a wider membership of around 25.
Cheshire set up a single, relatively small Project Steering Group. This comprises the 5 staff directly concerned with the improvement plan, two LAF members (one a County Councillor) and an officer of the Countryside Agency.
In Bedfordshire no formal meetings were held but the ROWIP officer set up a "virtual" steering group which met on a continuous basis by the exchange of e-mails. This was only partially successful as the group lacked the discipline imposed by regular, timetabled meetings. It also lacked the status and authority that a senior officer would have conferred by chairing the group.
Northumberland and Dorset were among the authorities that took a conscious decision not to set up a steering group (to avoid "steering group overload" and, in Dorset, to reflect the authority's more flexible, one-to-one methods of working). However both authorities now say that, if starting again, they would reconsider this decision.
