Contribution
My hon. Friend is right to point out the importance of services along these well-loved routes. He is also right to highlight that national trails are accessible from urban areas, which makes them particularly special compared with national parks and landscapes.
Walkers are currently forced to deviate from the Thames Path at both Benson and Henley. While the weir project is progressing in Benson, the Marsh Lock horse bridge between Henley and Shiplake has been closed for over three years. The current diversion requires crossing the dangerous A4155 twice and takes the walker well away from the water.
Since coming into office, I have been campaigning to reopen Marsh Lock bridge. With the help of an 11-year-old Brownie, Claudia, and her petition, access to a pot of £500,000 has been secured to begin plans for repairs. I continue to have conversations with the Environment Agency to ensure that repairs move forward. I am grateful to the Minister for Water for her engagement on that issue, but there is a long way to go, including to find the estimated £2.5 million needed to actually implement the repair.
Further north in my constituency, the Ridgeway national trail carves an impressive path from the iconic Goring Gap, through the village of Nuffield and the idyllic town of Watlington, before crossing the border into Buckinghamshire just after Chinnor. The Ridgeway is known as Britain’s oldest road. It is believed to have been in use over 5,000 years ago as a trading route. We know how important connection to our history and cultural heritage is. It is amazing to think that when we walk the Ridgeway, we are striking our feet on the same earth as our ancestors all those years ago.
The Ridgeway is also well known for the internationally renowned Uffington white horse, carved into chalk, but such chalk is vulnerable to damage and parts of the Ridgeway are classified as byway, meaning they are legally open to motorised traffic. The Ridgeway therefore suffers damage from recreational vehicles and off-road motorcycles. Local authorities and National Trails UK find it difficult to justify the regular repairs needed to maintain the trail to the correct standard. Ian, the project’s trail officer, is fighting to prohibit recreational motorised vehicles from the trail so that road users are limited to Trampers, off-road wheelchairs and road-legal pedal electric bicycles.
From just those two examples in my constituency, we begin to get an idea of how important protected national trails are for nature and our history. After speaking with representatives from National Trails UK, the Thames Path and the Ridgeway, I know that stark action is needed.
There are three main problems preventing the maintenance of national trails: legal status, underfunding and bureaucracy. National trails were originally designated by the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. The main goal was to provide public access to the countryside and establish protected landscapes. Trails, parks and landscapes were considered under that legislation. It gave powers to Natural England to survey, plan and propose long-distance routes that would subsequently be maintained.
Since that legislation, however, the legal status and protections of those routes have deteriorated. Although national parks and national landscapes have what is known as a statutory purpose, national trails do not. They are therefore not sufficiently protected by or referenced in key legislation alongside parks and landscapes, giving them a lower status. That lower level of protection puts people’s access to the outdoors at risk.
Furthermore, the current designation of national trails is mostly limited to the width of the path, which is particularly worrying given that they neighbour vast biodiversity. The Thames Path, in my constituency, runs along the edge of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust’s Hartslock nature reserve, which is one of the two remaining UK sites to have the monkey orchid. The Ridgeway passes through the Chinnor Hill and Oakley Hill nature reserves. Failure to recognise the paths’ interconnectedness with other nature means that BBOWT has reported damage to the surrounding nature due to ill-thought-through diversions or people straying from the paths, but without recognition of the surrounding nature, there is no allocation for renewal and maintenance.
The second main problem is funding. Considering how many economic benefits national trails bring, they have not received a meaningful funding increase since 2013.