Its decline was due to the loss of its preferred habitat: heath and scrubby open ground, much of which was destroyed by agricultural ‘improvement’ or maturing conifer plantations. Agrochemicals also played a part: killing off the moths which are the Nightjar’s preferred foodstuff.

Now, good news. A project spearheaded by the South Downs National Park Authority has seen the birds make a major recovery, with 109 territories marked in a recent survey of Hampshire’s lowland heaths – the highest ever recorded.

Yet, in a familiar twist, no sooner had the good news broken than anti-access voices declared the recovery an argument against the right to roam.

“All they [the Nightjars] need now is a right to roam Act [sic] to send them back to the brink…” wrote Rosie Pearson of the Community Planning Alliance (a NIMBY pressure group).

I presume Rosie meant that, as a ground nester, Nightjars are a species which is especially vulnerable to public access. That does seem intuitive. Nightjar habitat commonly intersects with places visited by people. People bring dogs. Dogs snuffle about in the undergrowth, flushing the sensitive birds as they nest, leading to abandonment or exposing the eggs to predators like crows.

In reality, the evidence for this is far more complex than it first appears – I’ll return to this later.* But Rosie’s comment was interesting because it was exactly wrong. Nearly all of the sites where the Nightjar is recovering in the South Downs are, as surviving remnants of heaths and commons, already designated access land under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act. They constitute part of the 8% of land in England that already has a right to roam.

The BBC report does mention that part of the work undertaken by the SDNPA and its rangers did relate to public education drives warning dog walkers about the potential of Nightjar disturbance. That is as it should be: the culture of access rights should include raising the bar on awareness about the impacts we can have.

But the most significant factor in the Nightjar’s recovery was the restoration of the heathland itself. According to the SDNPA, this was undertaken by 115 volunteers who devoted a whopping 50,000 hours to the effort, with over 349 events reaching 16,000 people across the local area to help cultivate a culture of care at the sites (something the Right to Roam campaign likes to term ‘Wild Service’).

This should give the nature-minded critics of public access some pause. Because while it might theoretically be possible to get hundreds of volunteers to give up tens of thousands of hours to undertake conservation work in places they have neither knowledge of, nor the right to access, in practice I doubt that’s how it works. Instead, as the campaign has highlighted time and again: access can be the precondition of guardianship. Where we connect, we protect.

Kudos to the SDNPA, who leveraged this principle in their framing. They spoke of “reuniting communities with their local heathland”, positioning access users as potential custodians, rather than threats. Rather than berating dog walkers, they created SANGS (Suitable Alternative Natural Greenspaces) to absorb recreational pressures and developed recommended routes through the heaths themselves. This is pragmatic, inclusive access management, which starts from an assumption of belonging rather than seeing people as a nuisance, or passive ‘visitors’ to be handled without any ownership or agency.

I’ve seen this in my own area, where another successful Nightjar recovery effort has been underway. As in the South Downs, this involved partnership between the National Landscape team, local environmental NGOs, and community volunteers. And, as in Hampshire, it’s all taking place on access land popular with recreational users. Still, the Nightjars are recovering.

Zoom out, and the roots between access and the Nightjar’s fortunes go deeper. Because many surviving heaths only exist because of a history of public fights over access and conservation, which protected the landscape from enclosure and agricultural ‘improvement’. This culminated in some 7,000 commons, spanning 375,000 hectares, being preserved in perpetuity following the Commons Registration Act in 1965. Though more are likely to still be unregistered.

Public amenity is one of the few counterbalances to extractive land use we have – something anti-access groups like the Community Planning Alliance would do well to remember when seeking to preserve the Green Belt from development. Go beyond access as a mere amenity, and instead as a way to cultivate landscapes of belonging which are the hearth of community life, then we might enrich our culture, and keep precious habitats more secure.

*An Addendum on the science of Nightjar disturbance

The stories we tell around recreational disturbance aren’t always as clear cut as we think. In an area like land use, where narratives are conflictual, evidence is partial, and motivations interfused with power, psychology and culture, it can be difficult to discern what is and isn’t actually a problem. Even well produced scientific studies can be contradictory when taken together, or miss out the complex longitudinal phenomena they were never designed to determine (like the overall influence of belonging on pro-ecological volunteering, or de-facto preservation of a landscape through public use and public advocacy).

The literature on Nightjar disturbance is a good example of this, with studies varying significantly in their conclusions. See for instance this paper on the breeding success of Nightjar and Woodlark on protected sites (SSSI and SPA) in Breckland. Despite the popularity of the sites with access users, the author (an academic with UEA and BTO) found “no evidence that recreational activity affected post-fledging survival”, nor any evidence that recreational activity amplified the presence of predators (who might in turn affect survival). Nor did it assist their predation, e.g. by dogs flushing birds and exposing their camouflaged nests to predators. Perhaps surprisingly, there was also no evidence that rates of flushing were any higher close to paths. The author further noted that Nightjar “did not nest further from paths in patches with greater levels of recreational activity.”

A caveat is that the study did not explore so-called ‘ghost disturbance’, i.e. whether Nightjars simply never establish nests in areas with higher recreational pressure, even if the nests that are established don’t fail at any higher rate than those in areas of lower pressure. There are some indications from other, more negative, studies, like this one from Sherwood Pines, that this could be the case. Though this could be less an argument against access rights and instead a question of zoning across suitable habitat. In other words, we’re back to the sorts of interventions used by the SDNPA – SANGS, public education, and recommended routes. This study did not examine whether overall abundance was affected: we might say that a different distribution is less of a problem if what results is the same abundance of a species within a given region overall.

I mention these examples not to minimize the issue of disturbance but to advise against narrow or simplistic understandings of its mechanisms and impacts. Problems, and answers, are often specific to site, species, and local provision. Their causality may not be well understood. While exclusion may be a tempting short term solution for some conservationists (and in places will be justified) species recovery on access land, powered by mass community engagement, shows a more productive path where conditions allow it. Both for the flourishing of people, and the extraordinary, mysterious Nightjar.

Want to become a campaign supporter and help us win a true right to roam in England and Wales? Visit: righttoroam.org.uk/donate.

It’s early in the summer yet (the coolest summer for the rest of our lives, as I have heard it said), and this conversation isn’t going away. There’s already talk of the next swim trespass, and if you want to be a part of it or want advice organising your own, do get in touch. It’s looking sunny next week.

Anyway - here’s the article, please do share or leave your own thoughts.

Beautiful, but deadly. On average, 45 people in Wales lose their lives to drowning each year: Unauthorised swimming in reservoirs can kill.

Those are the words that flash darkly across a Dŵr Cymru (Welsh Water) Instagram reel aiming to deter would-be swimmers from cooling down in bodies of water during a record-breaking June heatwave. It follows from a number of similar posts highlighting the potential fftality of ‘unauthorised’ swimming in any of the 90 or so reservoirs managed by the company.

You could call it effective comms — it sure evokes a primal fear of death. Many of us know or know of people who have drowned. I certainly do. Why not stay alive? Stay dry! But all is not as it seems.

Forty five people drowning (on average) is too many. One person drowning is too many. Each is a terrible loss to a family, a community. But to wave this number around devoid of context as Dŵr Cymru has, is to wash its hands of its responsibility to the public and amounts to corporate gaslighting.

That’s because this number doesn’t show what it purports to: according to the WaID (Water Incidence Dataset, the body responsible for collecting this information) data for 2025, of the 27 categorised drowning deaths in Wales, more than half were due to suicide. Not unauthorised swimming. Suicide. As someone whose family (like many others) has been affected over multiple generations of suicide, often by water, this feels like a particularly warped manipulation of data.

Of the remaining categorised deaths on record, around half (45%) took place on the coast – well away from any reservoirs. For the few that remain (around six), three are on the public record as occurring in flowing water — rivers (a tragic case of two sisters, Hajra and Haleema Zahid who drowned in the Watkin Pools on Yr Wyddfa, and Lord Lipsey, a Labour Peer in the River Wye). We simply don’t know how many (or if any) of the deaths unaccounted for occurred in lakes or reservoirs.

The misuse of such a serious statistic to carry water for a continued blanket prohibition is offensive, reprehensible, and incorrect. It is a flagrant misuse of data, and it doesn’t save lives.

Now, let’s not be unfairly harsh; Dŵr Cymru do manage a few sites for outdoor access, three for swimming. One happens just a couple of miles from where I live, at Llanishen Reservoir. I thought I’d pay them (literally) a visit to check out the facilities.

Only one session was available for me to book — the 15 minute ‘splash’ session at 8:30am, costing four pounds. I arrived just in time, and was informed I needed to don a special swimming cap and be strapped to a flotation device before I’d be unleashed on the 30m square cordoned corner of the reservoir allocated for my slot.

The water was perfect — no cold water shock here. I was told by one of the friendly older women who made up a majority of rest of the attendees that the temperature had been measured at 25 degrees that morning. I bobbed around, swam a few short laps, and chatted to the others. One woman said she was a regular visitor, but gushed about her experiences swimming for free in Bavarian lakes, revelling in the freedom offered. At fifteen minutes, we were informed that our time was up and that we should exit with haste.

“Can I swim out the long way around?” asked my new friend, who had her grandchildren in tow.

“No. You have to get out now.” came the flat response from our bored overseers.

As I obediently paddled to shore and changed, another woman reached the slipway, breathless.

“Oh! I’m too late! I slept in!” she exclaimed.

I suggested that, alone, she might not be detected down the far end of the pond.

“Better not” she replied, clearly deflated, before wandering off, despondent.

I settled into the cafe to work, but noticed that no more sessions were being run after ours. That oh-so-appealing water, totally empty. I couldn’t help thinking that it was a terrible waste. I’d still be in there if I could, and if this was an open, free, swim spot, you could be sure that the water would be teeming with people, all having an amazing time and a much needed cool-off. But no — I suspect that the booking system is as much about reducing the numbers that Dŵr Cymru have to deal with, as it is about making money. Is it their job to artificially limit the number of people who get to enjoy swimming in this way? I don’t think it is.

The other part of Dŵr Cymru’s attitude towards recreation that many of us in Wales find objectionable is the emphasis on the language of authorisation. “Unauthorised swimming is never allowed” is a tautology — but even so, authorisation doesn’t automatically confer safety. Responsible management, and education do. As it stands, Dŵr Cymru are happy to provide basically none of that unless strictly controlled, and commodified. Prohibition is a cop out — a dirty company washing its hands of their responsibilities to the public.

Meanwhile, another significant institution, Cardiff Council, are content to signpost the public over to lifeguarded sites that do not, in fact, exist. At the time of writing, just posted another statement saying that “three times as many accidental drownings occur when water temperature exceeds 25 degrees”. Perhaps those drownings would be fewer if you could point us to lifeguarded venues that are real? Or if you facilitated safe entry and exit points to water?

But back to Dŵr Cymru; I’d like to do something futile and make an appeal to the conscience of a corporation that doesn’t seem to possess one. Our summers are getting hot, and they’ll only get hotter — in fact, they are already unbearable. As I type, three million Welsh people sit in homes ill-prepared for this weather, surrounded by cool bodies of water we are prohibited from, we are told, for our own good. Probably, some are swimming at this momemt, without (gasp) authorisation.

People deserve the opportunity to cool off, and to do so safely, without fear of reprisals. To connect there with nature. Water, cold or otherwise, provides enormous wellbeing benefits, and safety concerns are problems to be solved. Not shirked. Managed. I challenge Dŵr Cymru (and the Welsh Government) to take on that task, not only because it is their job, but because it’s absolutely the right thing to do.

There is no innate, insurmountable physical danger that precludes us from swimming in Welsh reservoirs, or lakes for that matter. In Scotland, there is a legal right to swim in in rivers, lochs, reservoirs and other inland waters. All over the country, from the urban fringe to the loftiest loch.

And Scottish Water? Far from weaponising suicide statistics to scare folk, they invest in schemes aimed at teaching hundreds of thousands of Scottish children to swim. As it says on the water company website:

“Scotland is a nation of rivers, reservoirs, coastal waters and lochs – and being able to enjoy these environments safely is important.”

I wonder which approach to public safety is more effective in saving lives?

Make no bones about it — people already swim in their thousands in hot weather all across Wales. Many swim in the cold. Whether that’s in the river Taf, or on the crowded beaches, or in the many reservoirs across Wales. The people of Hay on Wye campaigned hard to achieve bathing status for the Warren, one of only four inland sites of this kind, monitored for water pollution. They can now swim, informed of physical risks, something not many communities in Wales can boast of. The main factor which prevents people from swimming in Welsh rivers and other non-reservoir bodies of water in Wales is an overwhelming fear of catching a horrible pollution-related disease, and we can largely lay this at the door of Dŵr Cymru, too.

Other than the aforementioned Llanishen Reservoir, one of the only other official bathing spots in the interior of Wales is the lagoon at Llyn Padarn, which I am intimately familiar with, having grown up down the road. The pontoons there (seen here being cleaned by scuba divers, bottom right) act as a sort of welcome mat for swimmers.

There’s no need for lifeguards in a high chair. There’s no £4 for fifteen minutes. Just a safe entry and exit point, some safety equipment, and water quality monitoring. It’s also a pillar that supports several major parts of the local economy, as beloved in its use by locals year-round as it is by tourists.

This could be the scene at Dŵr Cymru reservoirs across Wales, a substantial portion of which were developed from natural lakes, just like Llyn Padarn.

I returned to Llanishen Reservoir on the hottest day of the year – June the 25th, this time in the company of some friends, and with a couple of protest placards. A cooling breeze blew across the open surface of the reservoir, and my friend bought me a rhubarb and custard ice cream. Waiting awhile for the others to arrive, we watched a staff member throw on a buoyancy aid, hop in a little orange motorboat, and zoom around the reservoir to tell some swimmers off at the other end of the reservoir. Clearly bored, his boat took a zig-zag path, showboating for the small crowd of soon-to-be trespassers on the cafe balcony. It was midsummer, and the place was eerily empty. And with that great big body of water in front of us, just begging to be swum in. I know of a way they could sell a lot more ice creams.

Once all had arrived, we made our way around the perimeter path, had a quick safety briefing, and stepped carefully over the narrow wildflower threshold that separated us from the water. A large, safe swimming area is conveniently marked out by yellow buoys, and we agreed to stay within this zone. Carefully, down slippery cobbles, we waded in (or butt-slid, in some cases). We were prepared to be shooed off within minutes, but it seemed we were out of view – managing to splash around contentedly for nearly half an hour before a man (seemingly unwilling to walk the 100m or so over to us from the visitor centre) slowly got into his plastic boat and whirred out to warn us:

“No unauthorised swimming. You all need to get out.” he said, with a certain kind of sadness in his eyes. Already refreshed, and resisting the urge to wise crack or invite him in, we shuffled ashore – the car park was about to shut anyway.

We also learned that a byelaw passed in 2025 makes trespassing in Llanishen Reservoir a possible criminal offense. A criminal offense to swim in the only fresh body of water within miles that I know with certainty, is safe to swim in. What a joke.

My final appeal — assuming that my appeal to their humanity fell on deaf ears, is a direct one at those running Dŵr Cymru. If you won’t do it for us, do it for yourselves. Do it because you’re incredibly despised in communities across Wales — hated for the high bills you make us pay, hated for discharging sewage into the environment 94,974 times in 2025, for the milky effluent flowing down to busy beaches, for the dead fish I found floating belly up in a local brook, for the gaslighting misinformation you pump into our social media feeds, and for the executive pay approaching half a million pounds.

Do it so that we all have a reason to hate you a little less. Because doing so is exhausting in this awful heat!

This is a post by Guy Shrubsole, co-director of the Right to Roam campaign. For more in-depth essays and thoughts from our campaign team, sign up to this substack.

“Place first, not party first” has been Andy Burnham’s motto, before and after the seismic Makerfield by-election. Burnham is unusual amongst politicians in defining himself so keenly in relation to place, casting it not simply as part of his personal backstory but also the basis of his political beliefs. ‘Manchesterism’, Burnham’s name for his philosophy of governing, is fundamentally grounded in the place that he’s been mayor of for the last decade. And underpinning every place, every community, is land.

The politics of land has been off the agenda in Britain for decades, but Manchesterism could well bring it back. Firstly, Burnham’s keen interest in regaining public control of housing and key utilities leads very quickly to questions of who owns land, and how the public sector might reverse decades of asset sales begun under Margaret Thatcher’s governments. Secondly, Burnham has long been an advocate for land value tax – a form of taxation which would levy property owners according to the value of the land they own. And thirdly, the people of Greater Manchester have long pioneered campaigns for greater access to land – from the mass trespasses at Winter Hill and Kinder Scout, to the creation of Britain’s first national park in the Peak District.

Let’s start with the ownership of land. “Public control is everything,” argued Burnham in an interview last year with the New Statesman. “When you’ve lost control of housing, energy, water, rail, buses, you’ve lost control of the basics of life”. Undergirding all of these basics of life is land: land on which social housing can be built, railways run, and wind farms and reservoirs constructed. If Manchesterism is a form of municipal socialism writ large, perhaps we should be looking at how municipal authorities operated in Britain at the height of their powers, from the late 19^th century to the 1940s. Then, local government acquired land at a rate of knots, in order to provide their populaces with council housing to live in, clean water to drink and green spaces in which to exercise.

When Manchester’s population expanded in the Victorian period, it was the municipally-owned Manchester Corporation which acquired land for reservoirs in the Lake District to supply the city with water. This all changed when Thatcher’s environment secretary Nicholas Ridley introduced legislation to privatise the water industry in the late 1980s, declaring himself “absolutely delighted that this Bill achieves the privatisation of nearly 500,000 acres of land”. Today the privatised water companies still own vast swathes of the countryside, comprising critical watersheds in the peaks and moors of Northern England. Yet they’ve failed to care for the land and infrastructure they were gifted. United Utilities, the successor company to the Manchester Corporation, stands accused of turning Lake Windermere green with algal blooms from the sewage pollution it has discharged into it.

“Manchesterism is the end of neoliberalism,” Burnham has declared in one of his campaign videos. If this is to be so, a reckoning is needed not only with neoliberalism’s privatisation of public services, but also of land itself. As the academic Brett Christophers has written, Thatcher’s disposal of public land was “the biggest privatisation you’ve never heard of”, leading to the sale of some 5 million acres worth a staggering £400bn. Today, according to my own investigations, the public sector owns just 8.5% of England – less than half of what public bodies owned before Thatcher took power. This “new enclosure” encompassed everything from the sale of council housing and water utilities through to the disposal of half the nation’s stock of County Farms. More recent attempts at privatising publicly-owned land have been beaten back by staunch public opposition. Look at the backlash to David Cameron’s thwarted attempt to sell off the Public Forest Estate; or how local residents halted Brighton Council from flogging off its downland estate, originally bought to let the public enjoy walking in the fresh air amidst glorious wildflowers.

Andy Burnham has already stated his support for renationalising Thames Water; I hope he will also give serious thought to how having more land in public ownership can serve the public good. Mathew Lawrence, director of the thinktank Common Wealth, talks about Manchesterism being the creation of a “productive state”, engaged in “directly owning and operating capital in essential sectors”. Land is an essential capital asset that consistently appreciates in value: “buy land, they’re not making it anymore”, as Mark Twain once quipped. Yet in Britain, even our national parks don’t actually belong to the nation. Small wonder that nature is ailing in such places, with private grouse moor owners turning parts of the Peak District into a tinderbox, sparking wildfires that choke the lungs of the residents of Manchester and beyond. We have hamstrung our public bodies by depriving them of the means to control the land under their jurisdictions.

Another means of exerting some public control over land is through taxation. Burnham is a long-term supporter of land value tax, first advocating for it in his first Labour leadership campaign in 2010. He then called taxing land values “an idea so old-Labour it can be traced back to Thomas Paine”. Burnham might have added that land value tax has since been supported by everyone from Henry George to Winston Churchill, was a staple policy proposal of Labour Party manifestos in the first half of the 20^th century, and unites economists of left and right who see it as being one of the most rational taxes you can implement. More recently, Burnham has expressed his support for land value tax during the Makerfield by-election campaign, telling the Guardian he backed “replacing ‘iniquitous’ council tax with a land value tax”, and telling the Telegraph: “I think land is under-taxed. I look, as mayor, at swathes of Greater Manchester that is land that is held, but there is no charge in terms of redundant land that is not used. I have long been persuaded of the argument for a land value tax.”

The most thought-through proposal for how to levy taxes based on land values – and in the process replace council tax and stamp duty – is the Proportional Property Tax (PPT). Its proponents, the Fairer Share campaign, count many Labour MPs amongst their supporters. They argue, rightly, that council tax is regressive – with tax bands based on valuations last undertaken in 1991, meaning that “those who have benefited the most from house price growth have also been the biggest beneficiaries of the council tax system”. The campaigners propose abolishing council tax and instead levying PPT, charged at a flat rate of 0.48% of the value of a property. Owners of expensive properties would end up paying more, but 75% of the public would pay less tax as a result. Fairer Share also propose applying the tax to undeveloped plots of land granted planning permission, to discourage land banking, and to levy higher rates on long-term empty homes.

But a politics of land and place isn’t just about legal deeds of ownership or the cold calculus of taxation: it is also about belonging. “Who possesses this landscape? The man who bought it or I who am possessed by it?” wrote the Scottish poet Norman MacCaig. The people of Greater Manchester have long understood this truth. They started the first campaigns in Britain for access to land, in order to experience the glorious countryside on the edges of their city.

In 1896, 130 years ago this September, ten thousand people marched up Winter Hill to the north of Bolton in Britain’s first mass trespass action. They were protesting the unlawful blocking up of a footpath by a grouse moor owner. Winter Hill sparked a movement for land access that continues to this day. In 1932, the baton passed to Manchester resident Benny Rothman, who led 400 hikers on the famous Kinder Scout mass trespass in the Peak District. The trespassers had to fight off gamekeepers on the Duke of Devonshire’s grouse moor, and some were imprisoned for their protest. But the action helped lead to the creation of the first National Parks in Britain by the post-war Labour government, starting with the Peak District. When New Labour took power in 1997, it was a Greater Manchester MP, Michael Meacher, who championed the Countryside and Rights of Way (CRoW) Act, giving the public a partial right to roam in England’s countryside.

Access to land is an old, oft-forgotten part of the Labour movement’s history, and it remains unfinished business. It was Meacher’s successor as MP for Oldham, Jim McMahon, who as shadow environment secretary called for Labour to pass a Right to Roam Act in government. McMahon’s team went on to propose that England should follow Scotland’s approach of creating a full right of responsible access to the countryside. But following heavy lobbying by landowners, Keir Starmer’s team took against the idea and U-turned. Many Labour MPs were disappointed and vowed to fight on. One of the most prominent champions of right to roam in Parliament currently is Phil Brickell, MP for Bolton West, whose constituency includes Winter Hill.

Andy Burnham should revive an English right to roam as a way to fulfil Labour’s manifesto commitment to “improve responsible access to nature.” The Labour movement has long seen access to land as one of the “basics of life”, and one that should be free and available to all. Giving the public a right of responsible access to their countryside would improve people’s health and happiness, save the NHS money, cost virtually nothing to implement, and be a vote-winner: polling shows that nearly 7 in 10 people back the idea, with equal support in both urban and rural areas. Most importantly, Burnham should embrace access to land because it speaks to the essence of Manchesterism: a politics that puts love of place at its heart.

Greater public ownership, fairer taxation, making the basics of life more affordable, cultivating love of place: many of the preoccupations of Manchesterism are shared by advocates of land reform. It’s clear that the government needs bold new policies that address the cost of living crisis, raise revenues and win back progressive voters in key constituencies. Proposals to reverse the privatisation of public land, replace unfair council tax with land value tax, and give the public a right to freely access nature speak to all of these. Manchester’s heritage of pioneering the public ownership of land and public access to the countryside offers inspiration for England to follow.

Nicholas is an eminent geographer (a former president of the RGS, no less) so his words carry weight. They were duly reported in a Times article (“Why Britain’s ‘most famous walker’ has a problem with the right to roam”, May 29th 2026) and I was invited to participate in a quick debate with him on Times Radio, where there wasn’t space to get into the details. With that in mind, I thought I’d develop them here.

First, it’s that’s helpful to understand that access reform has different elements. Good reform will address all of them together, and ensure they’re complementary. These are:

1) the underlying statutory rights, which establish the access ‘contract’ and lay the foundations for what is and isn’t possible. These serve to protect areas of informal & existing access from being lost, and set the terms for how access is communicated on the ground. In England and Wales, the statutory rights are laid out under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. In Scotland, they’re covered by the Land Reform Act 2003.

2) the access infrastructure, which makes those rights practicable – this can be everything from informal tracks, to full-blown rights of way, to accessibility interventions, to launch ramps on rivers, or access points for swimmers on reservoirs.

3) the access culture, which sets the norms and standards for how access is undertaken, and ideally leverages it for the benefit of citizen science, nature guardianship and ‘leaving a positive trace’ (a concept we call Wild Service)

I start with this because it’s a habit of this conversation to trade these different elements off against one another - for instance, emphasising access infrastructure instead of statutory rights - or expecting culture to change before the rights that nourish that culture are permitted. I strongly believe this is the wrong approach. We instead need to consider all the elements together.

Now, to Crane’s comments.

‘Crane said a right to roam was “quite complicated in England, where population density is six times what it is in Scotland”.’

Other than ‘can I camp in your garden?!’ (to which the correct answer is an immediate stone-faced ‘Yes’) this is probably the most common criticism we hear: a right to roam is all well and good in Scandinavia and Scotland, but England is just too crowded.

But I think density is the wrong metric. It’s the distribution which matters. Sure, population density is lower in Scotland than in England. Given 70% of Scots are concentrated in the Central Belt, is this really so different to the situation in, e.g. the M62 corridor?

When the Land Reform Act was passed in Scotland in 2003 its innovation was to apply rights of access precisely to areas like the populated central belt and agricultural lowlands of Scotland (since customary access to the highlands was already long standing). There is no evidence that calamity ensued as a result. If it can work in such places, then why not in England?

Secondly, density is relative. Is England really all that dense? Only around 10% is actually developed. Of that, about 5% accounts for residential use and gardens. Look out the plane window while cruising over England and what you’ll actually see is a whole lot of green and a whole lot of empty.

Now, England can sometimes feel dense. After all – we’re all sharing the same small percentage of it. Perhaps it’s the very limits of access that creates the illusion of concentration.

‘“To be practical I think a right to routes would be more helpful so we could connect up the disjointed sections of existing public rights of way, so that we can reach schools, shops and railway stations or even just to make circular walks around villages.”’

This is another common criticism. ‘Why focus on roaming rights when you should be improving the Rights of Way network instead? After all, it’s the paths people want, not the right to roam everywhere!’

The truth is that not only are the two compatible, they’re complementary.

Imagine a local authority wishes to establish a new green travel route, or join up some existing footpaths in order to make a convenient circular walk. At the moment, creating such a route would require the agreement of the landowners, often many landowners. As an example, we worked out that creating just one of the government’s vaunted ‘national river walks’ along the river Dart would require negotiation with as many as 108 riparian landowners. Which perhaps explains why they already seem to have given up using the river walks to actually expand access, beyond some infrastructure improvements. Sure, some landowners might be open to such routes. But most will view them as an inconvenience. It only takes one landowner in the chain to refuse permission for routes to be made unviable or prone to awkward diversions.

This has led governments to try and incentivise the landowners to provide access in exchange for public money. These ‘permissive access’ schemes are much loved by landowner lobby groups and you can see why: they get money for a path over which they retain full control. It will never become a ‘right of way’ so long as it has formal permission, and that permission can be withdrawn at any moment – for instance, when the public money runs out. This is exactly what has happened. Something like £20million of public money was spent on permissive access schemes in the last round of this funding (twice what it cost to implement the ‘right of responsible access’ across the whole of Scotland). Since then, the funding has lapsed and the permissive access has been withdrawn (being temporary or contingent in nature, it could never be mapped anyway). Any capital investment in access infrastructure (e.g. accessibility improvements to assist those with limited mobility) has therefore been wasted.

Alternatively, local authorities can enact a Public Path Creation Order. In theory, this weighs the public benefit against the impacts on landowners and, if found reasonable, allows for the creation of new paths. In practice, the compensation requirements are such that this is both expensive and time consuming. Since exclusion is the default, it can be maintained that any new access represents a loss to the land’s value, for which the landowner must be compensated. As a result, PPCOs are rarely used.

By contrast, in Scotland, where the ‘right of responsible access’ presides over most land and water, there is no ‘loss’ for putting in such path infrastructure (in Scotland these are known as ‘core paths’) because the public access rights already exist. Since these rights are widespread, mostly uniform, and make sensible exceptions to protect things like privacy and crops, there has also been no impact on the value of land and therefore no compensatory requirements would apply.

In fact, where access rights already exist, the incentives for landowners change. It is then in the landowner’s interest to embrace path infrastructure, or even create it themselves voluntarily, since this becomes a helpful tool of land management (especially in popular access areas) rather than a mere imposition or inconvenience.

Where the underlying statutory rights provide a presumption of access, they therefore serve as an enabler for infrastructure in three ways: 1) by ‘unlocking’ the informal infrastructure which already exists 2) removing incentives for its obstruction and increasing the incentives for its voluntary creation 3) overcoming the legal and economic barriers to its creation.

Now, Scotland isn’t perfect. They’re facing the same budgetary constraints as everyone else to get the access infrastructure they need. And England and Wales definitely have a head start in this regard due to their more extensive Rights of Way networks. The problem is that this network is limited in what it permits, uneven in its distribution, and sometimes poorly maintained or purposefully obstructed.

In the event of a ‘Scottish style’ right to roam being introduced in England and Wales, we’d therefore like to see local authorities tasked with drawing up new access masterplans, which use the freedom of new statutory rights to create a modern, joined up network of routes and other infrastructure for the benefit of everyone in their authority.

‘Crane, who once walked the length of Britain as much as possible in a straight line — which he admitted on Friday involved trespassing — said he was also in favour of attempts to restore “lost ways” — 49,000 miles of routes that were used by the public for more than 20 years but were not made into public rights of way and have now fallen out of use.’

It isn’t an either / or – both are possible. But it is worth noting that every additional Right of Way is theoretically an additional maintenance burden; either on the local authority, the landowner, or on access volunteers. These historic ways do have an inherent cultural value. And it’s definitely the case that restoring some of them to full use will provide meaningful public benefits. Others may have fallen out of use for a reason, perhaps because they’re relics of kinetic patterns which no longer fit the habits of the modern countryside.

We need serviceable routes which fit modern needs, not to solely preserve the ways of the rural yesteryear; many of which were themselves compromises leftover when a wider, more ‘roamable’ countryside was fractured.

On the experience of trespassing: I know that Crane has spoken before of the fear he felt while trespassing across England. The way the anticipation of confrontation soured his experience of doing something as ordinary as passing through the landscape of his own country; even if the reality of his encounters with gamekeepers and farmers were mostly positive once the ice was broken (though this can vary depending on how you look and sound!). We should remember that this feeling is totally needless. In England and Wales, where trespass is a civil offence, the law achieves one thing alone: it makes the innocent feel afraid, the angry feel emboldened, and the atmosphere of the countryside soured by paranoia and misanthropy.

Meanwhile, people who really do have ill-intent aren’t bothered in the slightest.

Who does such fear serve? What does it achieve? What would removing it really cost? Does it make any sense as a way to define our collective relationship to land? Not to me.

Crane said he recognised how “incredibly important” it was “not to be constrained to footpaths”, citing how people can “wander at will” in many areas including Dartmoor, the Peak District, Pennines, Snowdonia and Lake District.

I agree.

Yes, most people most of the time want an accessible path to follow (see above for how underlying rights support that). Still, there are many good reasons for wider roaming rights too. A lot of natural history, citizen science, practical conservation, guardianship, archaeological and spiritual interest and so on takes place, by necessity, off the path.

There is also the psychological freedom of moving through a landscape which doesn’t feel snipped and curtailed, or like its giving the absolute minimal allowance to your right to exist. See ‘The Iron Wall of Somerset’ for an extreme manifestation of something we’re often tacitly accepting all the time. Beyond the extremes, it’s a common enough experience to find a Right of Way reduced to little more than a “thin strip of legitimacy” (Nick Hayes) running between a barbed wire fence. The effect is mostly unconscious but I suspect sorely felt, and corrosive to some of the very things that make us human.

Yes, the burden of responsibility grows when one strays off the path, especially to our fellow species. But those who do it most are either 1) children, whose free roaming we can and must forgive 2) roaming with mindful intent, and therefore the most likely to attend to any resultant responsibilities 3) indifferent to what the law does and doesn’t say, in which case, are going to do it anyway.

“There is also the fact that food security is a massive, massive issue. We don’t have sufficient food security and so farmland is a critical resource,” Crane said.

I found this comment strange.

Leaving aside what we actually mean when we talk about food security (contra the National Farmers’ Union, it is not the same thing as autarky – in fact, that would be a profoundly insecure food system), I cannot understand what access rights have to do with it.

Food production continues in Scotland. And the ‘right of responsible access’ there, as in Scandinavia, applies to uncultivated ground or to the field edges – not to land where crops are growing.

Now, this isn’t necessarily the ideal solution for farmland connectivity. We’re open to other suggestions (our access-friendly farmer group has suggested a voluntary set of ‘recommended routes’). Yet a not unreasonable aim of agricultural policy - as mooted already by Dave Morris, who helped drive through the Land Reform Act - is to support leaving field edges or margins uncultivated anyway. Those with low footfall provide wildlife benefits, those with high footfall provide access benefits. They’re also increasingly relevant for integrated pest management, which is a growing feature of agri-environmental payments and the transition from damaging and expensive pesticides. Win-win-win.

He [Crane] added: “It is simply not practical, as it was decades ago, to run around in fields when you have got absolutely ginormous tractors with spreaders and other stuff being towed around.

Okay, I also found this comment a bit of an eye-roller. To be fair, it may have just been a flippant remark for the audience… except that this is actually a genuine claim made by the NFU and CLA as to why we can’t have access rights. And one that was even solemnly repeated by the former Secretary of State for DEFRA, Steve Reed, when he explained why Labour wouldn’t support Scottish-style rights across the border.

There is no evidence to support it.

We have pulled all the data on fatalities on agricultural land in England, Wales and Scotland between 2018 - 2023. And guess what, the total public deaths on Scottish farmland across those five years was… one. The victim was actually a retired farmer, who sadly died while moving cattle (so not really a ‘public’ death in the ordinary sense at all).

Total public deaths overall are low, with a cumulative total of 24 over the five years across all three countries. Only 13 of these were access users.

You’ll notice that Scotland, which essentially had zero public deaths across all five years, despite having a universalist approach to access, is actually the positive outlier here. So the reality is the opposite of what Nicholas (and the NFU, the CLA, and Steve Reed) suggest, even as a proportion of population.

I wouldn’t want to speculate too much as to why that is. But perhaps it’s actually easier to avoid farmland hazards when you’re not scared of being accused of trespass. The most dangerous thing you’ll encounter on farms as an access user is cattle. And it’s much simpler to avoid the cattle if you’re not forced to stick to a very specific path. Sure, tractors are big. But they’re also slow. If the ordinary person can navigate cities full of traffic, I’m confident they can move out of the way of an off-road John Deere inching along at 6mph in a field.

“And there is the dog issue which has complicated matters enormously because landowners and farmers have a scapegoat now. The public can’t control their dogs [they say] so we can’t allow people to walk on farmland. That is now a massive issue.”

On this we can agree. Dogs are definitely a problem (and wonderful and beautiful and good for us in all kinds of ways). There are more of them than ever. They’re especially a pain at the moment because a lot of them missed proper socialisation during the pandemic lockdowns. They can wreak a lot more havoc on wildlife and livestock than humans can. Roaming rights should probably not extend to them in the first instance.

Obviously – none of this is the fault of the dogs. They’re just being dogs. But I think it’s fair to say we do have a cultural problem with dogs and we’re (mostly) doing bugger all to fix it.

But it’s also true that this issue is completely resolvable. The Right to Roam campaign has done quite a lot of thinking about how to resolve it and been bold in calling for greater regulation. It’s a bit annoying therefore that, years on, we’re still having the same unproductive conversation about the fact dogs are an issue, when pretty much everyone agrees. It’s time to discuss the solutions. Here are ours.

In fact, I’m starting to get suspicious, as Nicholas himself seems to suggest, that some of those stakeholders rather like having a bogeydog to blame. We invited groups like the NFU to co-sign our proposals to show there’s unity on this between access groups and farming groups alike. They didn’t bite.

It’s also notable that when you go back through the archives to previous eras of access debates (prior to the CRoW Act in 2000 for instance, and the Land Reform Act in 2003) the same debates recur again and again: ‘It’ll be a disaster! It’s the end of farming as we know it! The end of wildlife! The public will cause havoc! We already have enough paths! Dogs!’. Yet while nothing is perfect, it should be obvious by now that these tales of calamity have never come to pass.

I’ll leave you with the words of one former president of the National Farmers’ Union who, when interviewed after he’d left his office in 1996, noted that “I think farmers are extremely conservative when it comes to granting public access… I have had no problems. I think farmers in general greatly exaggerate the threat.”

The 72-year-old author and broadcaster told the Hay Festival he also worried that the right to roam campaign was more of a political issue than a genuine “countryside access movement”.

I don’t know what it means to distinguish a “genuine countryside access movement” from a “political issue”. Of course it’s a political issue. Nearly all decisions about land are inherently political. They’re about power, history, policy, democracy, property, and contesting rights. That’s why every single ‘genuine countryside access movement’ I can think of has had a political character.

In his Times Radio interview, Nicholas cited the Open Spaces Society as a standout example of such a movement. But the OSS was created out of mass protest against the attempted enclosure of Epping Forest. The Winter Hill mass trespass on the moors above Bolton: organised by a local branch of the Social Democratic Federation. The Kinder Mass Trespass: organised by a group of young Mancunian communists. The first full-time secretary of the Ramblers Association, Tom Stephenson: a conchie, a socialist, a pacifist.

What of the opponents of access reform? When it was founded in the early 20th century, one of the main aims of the Country Land and Business Association - the lobby organisation for major landowners - was to prevent public access to private land, and to force compensation claims when access rights were granted. They continue to be the main lobbyists against access reform today. Are we saying it’s apolitical when these groups act in their interests, but of an unseemly political character when campaign groups do the same in the public interest?

Some may consider it impolite to draw the obvious links between our feudal history, the vast concentrations in land ownership, and the paucity of rights of public access. I think not doing so would be an act of intellectual dereliction. Now, being political isn’t the same as being unpleasant, or refusing to acknowledge the reasonable interests of others, or ignoring opportunities for collaboration. It’s just being honest. Land is political. Access is political. It’s a conversation for us all.

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