Landowner issues with active travel path delivery
Case reference FOI2025/00839
Received 30 April 2025
Published 28 May 2025
Request
Following a book last year on the National Cycle Network, and for a current project I’m working on, on rural active travel paths, I’m interested in active travel schemes in which local authorities and communities have encountered landowner difficulties. I am looking to establish the scale, nationally, of the problem, the length of potential routes these landowners are blocking (including potential routes that would connect to the landowner’s land but cannot proceed over a longer distance or in their entirety without that landowner’s assent). I am not looking to expose individual landowners, but to understand the scale of the problem.
Can you tell me:
1. The length, in miles, of A) proposed traffic-free paths or greenways being held up because they would need to cross a resistant landowner’s land, and B) the total length of route(s) that would be deliverable were those landowners to assent, i.e. if a proposed path would travel three miles between two towns but
A), landowner X refuses to agree to a path across 500m of their land (and there’s no feasible alternative),
B), this makes the whole three miles undeliverable, or so expensive to re-route as to be undeliverable.
2. Has your local authority successfully used
A) the threat (for want of a better word) of, or
B) implemented, CPO (compulsory purchase order) powers to deliver any traffic-free cycling and/or walking paths since April 2017?
If so, any details would be appreciated.
Response
Following a book last year on the National Cycle Network, and for a current project I’m working on, on rural active travel paths, I’m interested in active travel schemes in which local authorities and communities have encountered landowner difficulties. I am looking to establish the scale, nationally, of the problem, the length of potential routes these landowners are blocking (including potential routes that would connect to the landowner’s land but cannot proceed over a longer distance or in their entirety without that landowner’s assent). I am not looking to expose individual landowners, but to understand the scale of the problem.
Can you tell me:
1. The length, in miles, of A) proposed traffic-free paths or greenways being held up because they would need to cross a resistant landowner’s land, and B) the total length of route(s) that would be deliverable were those landowners to assent, i.e. if a proposed path would travel three miles between two towns but
A), landowner X refuses to agree to a path across 500m of their land (and there’s no feasible alternative),
Answer: 0
B), this makes the whole three miles undeliverable, or so expensive to re-route as to be undeliverable.
Answer: 0
2. Has your local authority successfully used
A) the threat (for want of a better word) of, or
Answer: No.
B) implemented, CPO (compulsory purchase order) powers to deliver any traffic-free cycling and/or walking paths since April 2017?
Answer: None.
If so, any details would be appreciated.
Answer: N/A
Documents
This is Herefordshire Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
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