English coastal access: prime candidate for the chop?

With friends like this, do ramblers and walkers really need enemies?

An unnamed former Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs minister in the last Labour government has picked the proposed England coastal path as a prime candidate for the chop.

Writing on the Financial Times Westminster blog, journalist Jim Pickard says: “I asked a former (Labour) Defra minister last week what the easiest cut in his old department would be. The answer: the new coastal path.

“Introduced via a bill last year, the Government had planned to spend £50m connecting a 30-foot wide walking path around the country. The 2,500 mile route would have gone through beaches, farms and golf courses.”

Bear in mind that it was the Labour party that introduced the Marine and Coastal Access Act as one of the final pieces in the jigsaw that began with the Countryside and Rights of Way Act ten years ago – widely lauded as a huge step forward in opening up moorland and mountain areas to walkers in England and Wales.

Touted as one of the blog’s Cuts of the Day – which turn out to be less than diurnal; the last one appeared on 6 July and there have been only four previous CotDs since the coalition Government big axe started falling on Britain’s big society – the English coastal path is described by Pickard as difficult to justify saving. “Even those who love a good ramble must see that improving the hiking trail around Britain’s coast is less of a priority than – for example – care for the elderly.

“Hypothetically, an enthusiast could claim that the path might encourage more hiking, which would make the public more healthy, which would cut down on the cost of running the NHS, etc. Tenuous.”

Missing the point that the right to roam the Scottish coast is already enshrined in law, and that the all-Wales coast path is a matter for the devolved Welsh Assembly Government, the FT journalist continues: “This was one idea conceived during the times of plenty which could never survive grave public spending cuts. Apart from anything else, the theory was never going to live up to the rhetoric.

“Any idea that you would be able to walk the entire circumference of Britain alongside the sea was false. Private gardens would have been excluded from the exercise – meaning that you would have to detour inland time and time again. In which case, why even bother?

“There are plenty of existing coastal trails which are perfectly good. (May I recommend the cliffs and beaches of Pembrokeshire)?

Last time we checked, Pembrokeshire was still in Wales, though in these times of new politics, perhaps the Cameron-Clegg alliance is seeking to extend its remit west.

Inaccuracies and misconceptions apart, it’s an interesting point that even a minister responsible for its creation sees the English coastal path as a target for cuts. If Labour politicians are thinking that way, how long will it be before the coalition takes its axe to the project?

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg: will coalition Government oversee the axing of the coast path? Photo: Photo: Alex Folkes/Liberal Democrats

It was a Liberal Democrat, Lord Greaves, the party’s then environment spokesman who said, pre-election: “While we were passing the bill through Parliament the Conservatives sometimes seemed both partial and lukewarm in their support for this part of it.

“In addition, a Government looking for billions of pounds of cuts may find this important scheme to be an easy option. A battle has been won but I suspect the campaign for access to our coast is not yet over.”

As Prime Minister David Cameron prepares for his paternity leave, Lord Greaves’s party leader Nick Clegg may be the man standing at the dispatch box overseeing his lordship’s fears turning to reality.

As savage cuts hit every department, it is hard to see the coastal path surviving when school building is axed, police numbers are reduced, and public sector pensions shrunk.

The coastal access battle may not, as Lord Greaves said, yet be over.