Why and how should I report cropping and ploughing?
Article from Rights of Way Volunteer Newsletter January 2018 by Tracey Sutton
You help the Rights of Way Team look after one of the longest rights of way networks in the country. If all of Somerset’s rights of way were laid end to end, they would stretch from Taunton to New York!
The Rights of Way Team works closely with local landowners and farmers to help keep rights of way that cross their land open and easy to use. By working in partnership, we can encourage people to explore Somerset’s beautiful and diverse countryside responsibly and safely.
Two common complaints we receive from people concern paths that have either been left ploughed or are so overgrown by crops they’re impassable.
You may well know paths are well protected by legislation when it comes to ploughing and cropping. The enforcement and default powers available once initiated dictate a sequence of timely events if reasonable expenses are to be recovered. So what does that mean to those that use the paths?
The time that you report cropping or ploughing is critical. It helps Area Wardens to be efficient with their workload and to keep a good working relationship with famers. It is similarly imperative for them to consider other factors and timescales when dealing with cropping and ploughing on paths.
They have to decide the priority of the report within their workload. Factors the Wardens must consider are what the crop is, the point in the cropping cycle, what access (if any) is afforded, how the paths direction is obscured (for how far), what the definitive (or any alternative) paths surface is and how well the path is used.
Being informed as early as possible of ploughing and cropping issues is essential and increases the likelihood that our Wardens will be able to find the time to inspect in good time to enable enforcement action to follow as necessary.
Late notification of fields being cropped is difficult to resolve as the serving of notice so close to harvest time may not achieve the outcome any quicker than the harvest will.
We recog-nise that enforcement action can have a positive effect if done in the right way although as a general rule we try where we can to work with landowners rather than against them.
When a valid report of ploughing and cropping is received and investigated by a warden warning letters are sent and landowners/occupiers added to our list for reminder letters for the following year. This is with the intention that if they offend again we can go straight to notice without any accusation of unreasonable behaviour on our part.
Whilst our policy is to enforce the Highways Act provisions for ploughing and cropping, we must prioritise these reported issues against other network defects and maintenance works.
On occasion we apply discretion to some situations where the landowner willingly provides a wide margin as an alternative to clearing the line of the path. In certain situations there is often stronger community support/ preference/use of the alternative than to have the legal line available.
The best example of this are riverside alternatives which are marginally longer than the cross-field path, but to the majority of the public provide greater enjoyment.
In the past 12 months 3,720 issues have been reported on the Somerset RoW network, 140 of which were P&C offences. Over this period 3,476 issues were resolved. To report issues affecting rights of way please visit Explore Somerset the online interactive map at https://roam.somerset.gov.uk/roam/Map
Rights of Way, Volunteer Newsletter January 2018