Rights of way
Rights of way provide many opportunities to enjoy the natural environment. They can be wide tracks or narrow trails, and they can run through towns or across remote countryside.
All rights of way are legally highways and anyone may use them at any time. However, there are different types. You can walk on all of them, but some have extra rights to ride a horse, cycle or drive a vehicle.
- Types of public rights of way
- What is the legal status of public rights of way?
- Stakeholder Working Group on Unrecorded Rights of Way
- Who is responsible for public rights of way?
- Our rights of way publications
What is Natural England's role?
We continually review the opportunities to enjoy the natural environment, including rights of way.
Paths for Communities
The Treasury Autumn Statement on 29 November 2011 included Government plans to support rural tourism. As part of this package, Defra have asked Natural England to develop and run a new grant scheme called ‘Paths for Communities’. The aim of the Scheme will be:
to encourage and enable local communities to work with land owners to develop and enhance local public paths in ways that deliver wider benefit; and
to offer a network with more appeal to visitors and tourists, contributing to the rural economy through better support for local services such as shops, pubs, hotels, bed and breakfasts and equestrian businesses.
This will be a competitive scheme, supporting proposals that offer best value for money. Local community partnerships will bid into a central fund to create new public rights of way links in their area and higher rights (eg for horses and bikes) along existing ones where appropriate - and to make the local path network easier to use, better publicised and better integrated with local transport, services and popular destinations.
We envisage that ‘Paths for Communities’ will launch in April 2012. In planning the Scheme, Natural England staff will be drawing on our experience of other grant programmes and working with key stakeholders to ensure that the arrangements are simple, effective and sympathetic to the interests of all concerned.
More information will be announced as details are worked up.
Where can I find more information on rights of way?
For more detailed information on where to find them look at Ordnance Survey maps, in guide books, on information boards, and on the routes themselves in the form of waymarks.
Problem using a right of way?
If you experience a problem using a right of way, for example if it is blocked, you need to contact the rights of way section of the local authority through which the route passes.
Related article
