Posted on behalf of our friends at GLASS:

No matter where you live almost every green laner and trail rider has heard of Happy Valley, Carn March Arthur, The Wayfarer and Horseshoe. These are some of the most iconic green lanes in the UK, but damage has been caused by those who choose to act outside the responsible green laning community. This, coupled with the impact of weather and water erosion, has left local authorities with some hefty repair bills they simply cannot cover – so we need to take steps to bring these important routes back to their former glory.

Over winter GLASS have been busy forming plans with Denbigh, Wrexham and Gwynedd County Councils, Snowdonia National Park Authority and local landowners – now it’s time for action!

GLASS are going to help fund these large projects which will include:

• Helicoptering hundreds of tons of stone to repair Happy Valley and Carn March Arthur.
• Bridge repairs, sleeper section maintenance, drainage improvement, signage and off-piste solutions on the Wayfarer.
• Signage and drainage improvement along the full length of Horseshoe

We’ll be digging into our fighting fund to complete each project, but the shortfall needs to be covered by donations. Money raised will be ring-fenced for these projects and any excess used for future maintenance on the routes.

Our crowdfunding page can be found here: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/greenlaneassociation
(Please note that during the process donations to JustGiving are optional)

A project overview and future ongoing updates can be found here:
https://www.glass-uk.org/help-save-our-iconic-welsh-lanes.html

With your help we can ensure that some of the most well-known lanes in the UK are preserved for us all to drive for years to come.

Finally, don’t forget to pass the link to donate onto any green laners you know.

Ends

We have now completed the move to the new web server. The content is unchanged. There’s still some tidying-up and re-formatting to be completed and the old site will remain available at https://laragborg.wordpress.com/ until this has been completed.

Please be aware that we are moving the LARA website to a new web server, starting on the morning of Wednesday 13th November. The website will be continue to be available at http://laragborg.wordpress.com/, but not at http://www.laragb.org/, whilst the move is underway. The linked Reference Documents will be unavailable (at both web addresses) for a short period thereafter. Emails sent to any @laragb.org email address whilst the changes are underway may not be received. We currently hope to have everything fully functional within 24 hours, although we will be making minor changes to the style and format of the site over the following days.

We have just published a revised version of the LARA report on Motor Sport Events in the Countryside, subtitled Good Practice Guidance for Event Organisers & Land Managers. This supercedes the previous version, published in January 2016. This new version now covers only the laws and regulations dealing with the temporary use of land for motor sport events under what is known as the ‘14/28 Day Rule’. Sections of the first version dealing with the regulation of motor events on public rights of way, and the provision of permanent motor sport venues requiring planning permission, are now covered by separate LARA papers. The new report is available from the LARA – Publications page of this website.

We have just published a new LARA Paper, titled Motorsport Events on Public Rights of Way and sub-titled Good Practice in Statutory Authorisation. This sets out, in principle, the relationship between ‘route authorisation’ (under S.13 of the Road Traffic Act 1988) and authorisation for the use of rights of way (under S.33 of the same Act), together with basic guidance on appropriate conditions that might be imposed by a local authority when granted ‘S.33 authorisation’. We intend to publish a second paper, later this summer, providing more detailed guidance to organisers seeking S.33 authorisation for their event. The new Paper is available from the LARA – Papers and Reports page.

… passed quietly a couple of months ago. It is now just over 50 years since The Motor Vehicles (Competition and Trials) Regulations 1969 came into operation and they continue to regulate motoring events on public highways five decades later.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s there was increasing concern about the noise and disturbance caused by car rallies, particularly those held during the night. The Road Traffic Act 1962 made provision for the “Regulation of motoring events on public highways” and this led to The Motor Vehicles (Competitions and Trials) Regulations 1965, the first time that motoring events on the highway had to be authorised. The 1965 regulations were considered over-draconian and immediate efforts were made to relax some of the controls, resulting in the Motor Vehicles (Competitions and Trials) Regulations 1969 which are still in force (with amendments) to this day.

When one considers how our roads have changed in the last 50 years it is a remarkable tribute to those who drafted the 1969 Regulations that they are still considered ‘fit for purpose’ in a totally different motoring environment. It is also a tribute to our friends and colleagues, first at the RAC, then at the MSA, and now at Motorsport UK, who have been responsible for the ongoing implementation of these regulations.

We’ve been having a bit of tidy-up at LARA’s virtual HQ and Alan has unearthed a treasure trove of planning appeal decision letters issued between 1988 and 2010. Most of the issues that regularly bear against permanent (and sometimes temporary) motor sport sites are in here: noise, dust, traffic, green belt, SSSIs, and visual intrusion. We’ve combined them into a new LARA Paper available here, with apologies for the (large) file size.

A study of these decisions should inform future applicants about the difficulties they may face. We can’t explain why we’ve nothing more recent than 2010 on file but LARA welcomes any additional decision letters to add to this set.

One of the long-standing frustrations when dealing with countryside access has been the lack of easily-available information on the minor road network, particularly unsealed minor roads, and this frustration has only grown as more-and-more information on both surfaced roads, and the rights of way network, has become available online. If you’re looking for a surfaced road, then ‘coloured’ roads on OS maps or any decent SatNav system will show you where to go. If you’re looking for a right of way (BOAT, Restricted Byway, Bridleway, or Footpath), then the OS maps or the Local Authority / Highway Authority online maps will guide you on your way (errors and omissions excepted).

But unsealed unclassified roads have, until now, always fallen into an information gap between surfaced roads on one hand and rights of way on the other. The knowledgeable have always been able to head-down to their local highway authority to study the List of Streets (assuming that it’s in a user-friendly format) but what happens when you’re looking for somewhere distant where you can legally drive? It’s true that the situation got a lot better when the Ordnance Survey added the ORPA classification to their maps but that was, in principle, a once-off exercise and the OS has no mechanism for adding ‘new’ ORPAs to their maps.

Now, at last, GeoPlace have made the National Street Gazetteer available, online, at:

findmystreet.co.uk

This is a huge step forward but, before everyone gets too excited, it’s important to remember that the National Street Gazetteer is “a repository for combining the Local Street Gazetteers” and, as such, is only as good as the information supplied by the local Highway Authorities. A quick analysis, by LARA, has revealed a wide variation in both the quantity and quality of this information. At the better end, some HAs have included their rights of way data allowing a ‘one-stop-shop’ for all access information. At the worse end, some HAs appear to have ignored all of their unsealed roads.

The findmystreet website provides links to report ‘Missing Streets’ but LARA is asking all its member organisations, and their members, NOT to report missing streets on an ad-hoc basis as we are concerned that a tsunami of single street-by-street reports will overload the Highway Authorities. LARA will be co-ordinating consolidated lists of missing streets for the most important (to us) Highway Authorities and submitting these at the appropriate time. We’ll keep you posted.

Have you had a look at the Reference Documents pages of this website recently? We’ve been adding some historical documents over the last few weeks, and will be adding more over the next few weeks, so click the link above and take a trip down memory lane.

Our friends at the Open Spaces Society are looking to recruit a new Rights of Way Case Officer. Read more on their website at https://www.oss.org.uk/how-you-can-help/recruitment/