The TRF has released its Stonehenge skeleton argument. Read the full story on the TRF website here.

“The VNUK threat has not gone away but the direction of travel is looking more favourable and we will continue to lobby on behalf of all our members and stakeholders.” 

See the latest from the MSA here. 

The Old Coach Road is approximately 8 km of unsealed unclassified county road in the parishes of St. John Castlerigg & Wythburn, Threlkeld, and Matterdale. It was significantly damaged during Storm Desmond in December 2015.

Requests to Cumbria County Council, the Lake District National Park Authority, and others, failed to release the funds necessary for its repair, so the Cumbria Trail Riders Fellowship (CTRF) set up a crowd-funding process embraced by the national Trail Riders Fellowship (TRF), the Green Lane Association (GLASS) and the Trans Euro Trail community.

The road is now repaired for all users, whether they be walkers, cyclists, horse riders, farmers, paragliders, motor vehicle users or any other type of user. You can read more about this restoration project:

• On the GLASS website.
• On the TRF website.

We have just published an updated version of our report on Unsealed Unclassified Roads – Their History, Status, and the Effect of the Natural Environment & Rural Communities Act 2006. The first version of this LARA report was published in March 2013. This major revision incorporates some minor changes to the original text, and three additional sections dealing with the relationship between roads, as recorded on the highway authority’s ‘List of Streets’, and byways open to all traffic (BOATs), as recorded on the ‘Definitive Map and Statement’ of public rights of way. The report is available on the LARA – Publications page of this website.

We welcome all comments, and suggestions for clarification or improvement. LARA and its Member Organisations are ready and willing to work with highway authorities, and the various non-motorised user groups, to preserve this important part of our national heritage.

We’re delighted to announce that the VMCC has upgraded from Associate Member status to Full Member status with immediate effect. The VMCC had been a Full Member of LARA for many years before a decision was made to change to Associate status, so the return to Full Membership is a both a welcome vote of confidence in the future of LARA and a significant boost to our regular income. We extend our special thanks to those individuals within the VMCC (they know who they are) who have worked tirelessly to make this happen.

The TRF has commenced a legal action to challenge Wiltshire Council’s ban on motor vehicles using green roads in the vicinity of Stonehenge.

A crowdfunding campaign has been launched to support the TRF’s challenge, to raise funds for the case, and to demonstrate to the Council and others that the ban is not popular with the public. A successful outcome in this case will help protect public access to the Stonehenge green roads.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/save-public-access-to-stonehenge/

Those with a long memory will recall that the byways around Stonehenge have been under threat for years, and have been the subject of at least one public enquiry (which ruled that they should be kept open) in the past. LARA will not be directly involved in fighting the latest proposals, but we fully support our friends at the TRF in their campaign.

We’ve made some revisions to the recently-issued LARA Reference Document on Evidence of Public Road Status. This is available from the LARA Papers and Reports page of this website. The revised version is LARA Document No. 2018.08.18 (the earlier version was 2018.08.16).

LARA has received the following email from Natural England:

“… we are not at this point intending to schedule a meeting for October but propose, in line with discussions and actions from the last meeting, to consult with highway authorities re: best practice around TRO use and other vehicle management measures and strategies, with the aim of revising and updating the existing guidance made in two previous publications “Making the Best of Byways”  and  “Regulating the Use of Motor Vehicles” * We will also collate information from the sub-group reports and meeting discussions and contact you if we need any further detail or clarification. We don’t have a definite timescale at the moment but it’s likely to be Spring/Summer 2019 before we have a working draft. In the meantime members are of course welcome to contact us and continue online and face to face discussions.”

* We have slightly re-worded the text of the original email to clarify the two documents to which Natural England refer. Both documents were published in December 2005 and are available from the Government Publications page of this website.

Some background to this decision by Natural England

In the immediate aftermath of the passage of the Deregulation Act 2015 through Parliament, the Minister for Rural Affairs announced the formation of the Motoring Stakeholder Working Group (MSWG). The MSWG was tasked to look at a broad range of issues regarding the recreational use of motor vehicles on unsealed roads (including byways open to all traffic), and had members drawn from local government, land managers, non-motor users, motorists, and organisations seeking to close these roads to drivers. The group was to be facilitated and chaired by Natural England. The first meeting was on 17 November 2016, and the most-recent on 2 May 2018.

The MSWG focused on four principal areas:

• The status of unsealed unclassified roads.
• Traffic regulation: orders and other measures.
• Surface standards and repair.
• Illegal and anti-social driving.

In late 2017 the House of Lords Select Committee on the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 heard evidence about how the NERCA Act had changed the pattern of vehicular use of unsealed roads (including byways open to all traffic) and the Trail Riders Fellowship, LARA, and representatives from the anti-motors organisations, submitted written evidence and spoke to the Committee.

The Select Committee’s report, published on 22 March 2018 and available from this link, concluded that the current system of making traffic orders is just not flexible enough ‑ something the motoring groups had stressed in their evidence ‑ and recommended that the Government should move to make the process more effective.

It seems that the Government has now decided to progress the achievements of the MSWG by updating its own 2005 guidance.

What does this mean for LARA and its members?

The motoring members of the MSWG (GLASS, LARA, TRF) will continue to work with Natural England, DEFRA, and other MSWG members, in producing good, effective, and fair guidance on traffic management. LARA and its members remain committed to seeking “as much consensus as possible” via the MSWG in line with the Government’s stated position as made in the House of Lords during the debate on the Select Committee’s report (see above).

As a precursor to our forthcoming update of the LARA Publication on Unsealed Unclassified Roads, we have just published two new LARA Reference Documents; one on Road returns and records, and one on Evidence of public road status. These are extracts from the previous two-volume report, re-published as stand-alone documents cross-referenced from the updated report (which will be single-volume). Both documents are available from the LARA Papers and Reports page of this website. We will shortly be withdrawing the second volume (the Appendices) of the previous report, as this is now totally superceded by re-published Reference Documents.

‘Are all unsealed unclassified roads open to the public with motors?’  That question has been asked and argued over for decades. The answer seems to be that the great majority are, but a few can be shown to be bridleways or (more rarely) footpaths.

We have just published a new LARA Paper which is a collection of letters from government departments, 1983 onwards, stating the government’s view at the time of each letter.

The Paper is available from the LARA – Papers and Reports page in the Reference Documents section of this website.

This issue is also discussed at length in the LARA report, Unsealed Unclassified Roads. Their History, Status, and the Effect of the Natural Environment & Rural Communities Act 2006, due to be updated and re-published very shortly.