How the YDGLA Campaigns

Home |

Locally:

• We support North Yorkshire County Council’s and the Dales National Park Authority's plans to impose Traffic Restriction Orders on green lanes, and we encourage them to be more ambitious in their plans to restrict, and eventually banish recreational motor vehicles from the green lanes of the National Park and the Nidderdale AONB.
• We collect data that records the incidence of recreational vehicular use and the damage and nuisance that it causes.
• We catalogue the green lanes that either run through, or run close to, sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs), and sites of historical and archaeological importance.
• We listen to disabled people who have a special need for access to traffic-free green lanes, for example because there are no stiles to be negotiated, and because the lanes are wide enough, and often not too steep for rugged wheelchairs or for ‘Tramper’ type electric mobility scooters. Blind, deaf and learning-disabled people have an especial need for traffic-free green lanes.
• We press for the prosecution those vehicle users whose activities, even under the present obscure highway laws, are plainly illegal.

Nationally:

· We lobby local MPs and ministers responsible for the countryside, in order to persuade them first, that local authorities should be given more support and encouragement in applying traffic regulation orders to control recreational vehicle use, and secondly, that further changes in highway law are necessary.

· We liaise with groups, both in Yorkshire and in other parts of the country, who are fighting their own battles against the damage and nuisance caused by recreational motor vehicles. Among these are: GLEAM, the Green Lanes Environmental Action Movement. (www.gleam-uk.org ) GLEAM grew out of campaigns to preserve the ancient Ridgeway in Berkshire from the ravages of 4x4s and motorbikes, and has broadened itself to campaign nationally for restrictions on recreational motor vehicles. · The Ramblers' Association is also very active in presenting arguments to government concerning the damage and nuisance that motor vehicles cause. · TheYorkshire Dales Society works tirelessly for the welfare of the landscape and the culture of the Yorkshire Dales, and has done a great deal to draw attention to the damage that 4x4s and motorbikes are doing to green lanes. We helped found the Green Lanes Protection Group, the national coalition of organizations that wanted the NERC bill strengthened, and which was highly successful in conducting the Parliamentary campaign. The Green Lanes Protection Group brought together in common cause, groups that were traditionally suspicious of each other. The prospect of more and more green lanes falling prey to the recreational vehicle lobby propelled landowners, cyclists, walkers and others into a highly-effective coalition.