Glossary
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AREA OF OUTSTANDING NATURAL BEAUTY
(AONB) This term signifies a landscape of
high scenic quality that has been officially designated and protected. AONB landscapes are of a quality comparable
to national parks, but the authorities that manage them have not been given the
powers that national park authorities have.
AONB authorities, for example, have no powers to impose traffic
regulation orders (see below). In the
Yorkshire Dales, the Nidderdale AONB shares a border with the
BRIDLEWAY (BW) Routes that have public rights of way for pedestrians,
pedal cyclists and horses, but not horse-drawn carriages and motor vehicles.
BYWAY OPEN TO ALL TRAFFIC
(BOAT) As the name implies, these are rights
of way have public rights for pedestrians, equestrians, pedal-cyclists and
motor vehicles, although in order to distinguish them from the ordinary,
tarmacadamed road network, they are additionally defined as having the
character of routes used mainly for the purposes for which footpaths and
bridleways are used. BOATs are marked on
Ordnance Survey maps with lines of green crosses. Vehicular rights on BOATs may be suspended by
means of Traffic Regulation Orders (see below).
DEFINITIVE MAP AND STATEMENT Records required to be kept by local authorities in order
to record the exact location of all public routes, and to record the rights of
way that subsist on each of them. The
definitive map is necessarily a work in continuous progress: it is regularly
updated to record new routes, diversions to existing routes, and changes in the
rights of way status of routes. The
Ordnance Survey uses the definitive map as the source of its signification of
rights of way on its maps.
FOOTPATHS Routes that have public rights of way for pedestrians only.
GREEN LANE A useful, indispensable term, but one that has no legal
standing. It signifies an unsealed rural
track – i.e. one that has no tarmac or concrete surface. It may be simply grass, or it may have,
either wholly or in parts, a surface of cobbles or crushed stone.
GREEN-LANING See below, ‘Off-roading’.
LOCAL ACCESS FORUM (LAF) The Countryside and Rights of Way
Act, 2000, set up LAFs in every area of the country, in order to supply
authorities with advice and recommendations concerning all matters of public
access to the countryside. Members of
LAFs are appointed by their local authority, or national park authority. Authorities are required to establish and
maintain balanced memberships of their LAFs, striking balances among
land-owners, farmers, and recreational users – including walkers, cyclists,
equestrians and vehicle-users. The
Nidderdale AONB is covered by the North Yorkshire LAF, and the Dales National
Park by its own LAF. Local Access Forums are not to be confused with the Access
Committee of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority (see below).
LIST OF STREEETS
A list, required to be kept by local authorities, that records routes
whose maintenance is chargeable to the public purse. Unclassified County Roads (see below) are
recorded on the List of Streets. This
listing tells us nothing about the rights of way that subsist on UCRs. It tells us only that they are publicly
maintainable. This is the view of the
government’s legal advisers in the Department of the Environment and Rural
Affairs, but it is challenged by some recreational vehicle users who assert
that UCRs, by definition, bear public motor vehicular rights. YDGLA’s own research has shown that at least
one UCR in the Dales was, historically, dedicated as a bridleway. This undermines vehicle-users’ assertion that
all UCRs bear rights for motor vehicles.
NATURAL ENVIRONMENTS AND RURAL
COMMUNITIES ACT, 2006 (NERC) This highly important act set
severe limits to the expansion of the network of green lanes that must be
acknowledged to bear rights of way for motor vehicles. Section 67 of the Act extinguishes, with a
few exceptions, the motor-vehicular rights on all routes that are recorded on
the definitive map (and therefore on up-to-date Ordnance Survey maps) as
footpaths, bridleways, or restricted byways.
Before the NERC Act, recreational motor vehicle user groups took
systematic advantage of the pre-existing law, which said that if a route – any
route, regardless of its character – could be shown to have once been, maybe
centuries ago, legally open to horses and carts, it must be acknowledged now to
bear rights for motor vehicles. NERC
puts an end to this archaic ‘horse-and-cart’ rule, and gives protection to
hundreds of green lanes that were under threat of being classified as motor
routes. The exceptions in NERC to the
extinguishments of motor vehicular rights are important too, and they have led
to numbers of legal cases and public inquiries in which the new law has been tested. The significant exceptions to the
extinguishment of rights for motor vehicles are these:
i. Routes that are
on the list of streets but not on the definitive map and which can be shown to have public
vehicular rights.
ii. Routes for which
properly-made applications for the recognition of vehicular rights were
submitted before
iii. Routes where it can be shown that vehicular rights
were created by virtue of legal, public motor vehicular use before 1 December
1930.
iv. Routes where it
can be shown that the main legal use, between 2 May 2001 and 1 May 2006, was by
motor vehicles.
Important
tests of all of these exceptions have been made. Exception number i is regularly tested in
order to establish whether any particular route on the List of Streets has
historic rights for motor vehicles.
Exception number ii was tested in court and led to the ‘Winchester
Judgment’ (see below). Numbers iii and
iv have been tested at public inquiries where, so far, vehicle user groups have
been unable to secure the vehicular rights that they were seeking. The exceptions provided by NERC present
formidable obstacles to vehicle users who wish to engage them.
OFF-ROADING A term in widespread use, but one that is misleading: it is
best avoided. In common parlance,
including the parlance of many vehicle users, it signifies the practice of
driving or riding specially-designed motor vehicles - usually 4x4s and
motorbikes, but sometimes quad bikes - along rural green lanes. The problem with the term, as many vehicle
users justifiably insist, is that the green lanes that are legally open to
motor vehicles are, technically, indeed ‘roads’ – even those that are simply
grassy tracks. The term ‘off-roading’,
vehicle users insist, should be restricted to the practice of taking vehicles,
with the permission of the landowner, onto private
land where there are no public rights of way. A better term for signifying legal vehicular
use of green lanes is ‘green-laning’ but this term has not yet caught on
widely: it is used by some 4x4 users but not normally by motorcyclists, who
prefer the term ‘trailriding’.
OTHER ROUTES WITH PUBLIC ACCESS
(ORPAs) See below; Unclassified County
Roads
RESTRICTED BYWAY (RB) A right of way that excludes motor vehicles. RBs are open only to pedestrians,
pedal-cyclists, horses, and horse-drawn carriages
TRAILBIKES, TRAILBIKERS the names given
to the specialist, cross-country motorbikes, and the motorcyclists who ride
them along green lanes. Not to be
confused with Mountain-bikers – cross
country pedal cyclists.
TRAFFIC REGULATION ORDER (TRO) the legal means by which recreational motor vehicles may be
prohibited from using green lanes. TROs
may be imposed, usually after public consultation, by local authorities and
national park authorities. TROs can
range from full-time, 7-days-a-week prohibitions, to seasonal, or day-by-day
prohibitions. TROs can be permanent,
temporary, or experimental. They can
exclude all recreational vehicles, or some: eg they can exclude 4x4s but not
motorbikes. Usually, TROs except from
the prohibition landowners and occupiers, emergency vehicles, invalid
carriages, and vehicles requiring access to premises.
UNCLASSIFIED COUNTY ROAD (UCR, OR
UUCR – unsurfaced unclassified county road)
These
routes are recorded on local authorities’ list of streets (see above), and
often on Ordnance Survey maps as ‘Other Routes With Public Access’ (ORPAs),
marked with lines of green dots. UCRs
certainly bear public rights of way for pedestrians, but beyond that, nothing
is certain. It is likely that many of
them bear rights for equestrians, pedal cyclists and motor vehicles, but the
rights of way on UCRs have to be examined, case by case, by local authorities. This laborious and time-consuming examination,
by under-staffed departments, will take many years. The uncertainty that hangs over UCRs makes
their use by 4x4 and motorbike groups contentious. Were a vehicle user to be challenged by the
police for driving or riding along a UCR, he or she should be able to supply
evidence that the route indeed bears public motor vehicular rights. It is highly unlikely that many vehicle users
could do this. Equally, in the absence of
certainty about the rights of way on UCRs, the police are unlikely to challenge
vehicle users. The contentiousness of
vehicular use of UCRs will increase, for, with the impact of NERC, vehicle
users have been displaced from many routes that they formerly used with legal
impunity, onto UCRs, whose uncertain status gives them a cover for their
activities. But since many UCRs are
classic green lanes – quiet, unsealed tracks threading through the countryside,
the public’s hostility to motor vehicles in the deep countryside will increase
at a similar rate. UCRs can be protected
by means of TROs, imposed either by local authorities or national park
authorities.
WINCHESTER JUDGMENT This important legal judgment, issued by the Appeal Court,
in April 2008, bore down heavily on applications from vehicle users for
recognition of the vehicular status of many routes. The applications that were affected were
those that were lodged before 20 January 2005 and which therefore were exempt
from the extinguishment of vehicular rights embodied in NERC (See above). But a
test case concerning an application to have a green lane in Hampshire
acknowledged as a motor-vehicular route established that in order to be counted
as a valid application, the application had to have been framed in exact
compliance with the regulations governing the submission of maps and
evidence. In the Winchester case, the
application was shown to be non-compliant.
The confirmation by the Appeal Court of the rightness of this rejection,
established case law that has had the effect of sending hundreds of pending
applications, submitted by applicants before January 2005, and now shown to be
non-compliant, down the drain.
YORKSHIRE DALES NATIONAL PARK
AUTHORITY (YDNPA) This is the legally-constituted
authority set up to administer the national park. Its principal statutory duty is to ‘conserve
and enhance the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage of the National
Park.’ Its secondary duty is to ‘promote
opportunities for the understanding and enjoyment of the special qualities of
the areas by the public.’ The so-called ‘Sandford Principle’ established that
if there is a clash between these two duties, the duty of conservation is
paramount. It might be thought that the
duty of conservation automatically rules out the presence of 4x4s and
motorbikes on green lanes. However, the
Authority has no draconian legal powers to eliminate recreational vehicles from
all green lanes, in one grand purge. It
has to consider, case by case, each green lane, balancing its duty to keep
rights of way open to legal users, against its duty to conserve and enhance the
environment. Accordingly, the authority
has surveyed every green lane in its charge, has set up an advisory group that
includes equestrians, farmers, mountain-bikers, 4x4 and motorbike users, and
walkers, and has conducted numbers of public consultations. The present position (in January 2011) is
that full-time, permanent TROs have been imposed on eleven of the most fragile
green lanes, and that the rest of the network of green lanes is under regular
scrutiny by the Authority’s officers.
Decisions about the management measures required on green lanes are
taken by the Park Authority’s Access Committee, with advice from the
Authority’s officers.