Rural Affairs

Review Of Access In Agri-Environment Schemes: Outcome

Background

A Review of Access in the Countryside Stewardship and Environmentally Sensitive Areas (ESA) Schemes has been carried out. The Review involved a public consultation exercise last summer, and the summary of the responses was published on the Defra website.

General outcome

These responses have been discussed subsequently with partners and Defra is now able to report on the progress and plans for delivering the outcomes.

The overall response has been positive and helpful in directing effort to the areas most in need of improvement or where the interest is greatest.

The Review covered the principal aspects of access in the schemes that needed to be addressed, by means of ten questions. From the responses and subsequent discussions, five areas have emerged as being of particular interest or importance: the relationship with open access under the Countryside and Rights of Way (CRoW) Act 2000; targeting; publicity and promotion of the access sites; educational access for visits to farms; and payment rates (the latter were subject to a separate review).

The opportunity has been taken to implement improvements in these five areas in order to include them in the 2004 application round for Countryside Stewardship, and plans have now been made to take forward the others. The exception to this was educational access, where publicity materials and other improvements for host farmers were revised and issued in the spring of this year.

It was always intended that the work would feed into the main Review of Agri-environment Schemes and this has been done. The Steering Group for that Review has been kept informed of developments. The access being devised for the new higher level Environmental Stewardship Scheme (ESS) to be introduced in 2005 follows closely the improved arrangements to Countryside Stewardship arising from the Access Review.

Page last modified: 7 August, 2008
Page published: 24 November, 2003

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs