The social and economic benefits of Public Rights of Way - quantifying value for money
In
2006 Defra funded Cranfield University working with Bedfordshire County
Council to undertake research to develop a decision support tool (PROWTool)
to help local authorities to justify and prioritise rights of way expenditure
in line with the achievement of desired social and economic outcomes.
You can download the results from this site.
- Abstract and executive
summary only
- Final research report
- Guide to using PROWTool
- PROW Tool (rural)*
- PROW Tool (semi urban)*
The PROWtool is in Microsoft Excel format, to use it you must first save the PROWtool locally to your PC (selecting the open option rather than save prevents the tool from working correctly).
(* see user guide for differences between the two versions of PROWTool)
5 Good reasons to give it a go …..
- It provides a consistent and objective framework to help appraise the socio and economic value of the public rights of way network.
- It links physical features and usage with the achievement of key social and economic outcomes at community level (such as community cohesion, community health, culture and leisure).
- It could help strengthen internal and external applications for funding.
- It could help you decide how to prioritise spending.
- It’s relatively simple to use and should only take a couple of hours to get to grips with. You can contact Cranfield University if you get stuck – see below for contact details. Once you have added the data for your area you can easily test out different scenarios until you get the desired outcome.
Have a look and see what you think.
We would like to hear how you get on. The research report includes 3 Bedfordshire case studies, but we are looking for more and would be happy to use this site to showcase ways in which the tool can be used.
You can get in touch by contacting:
Karen Lee-Bapty at Defra via email at Karen.Lee-Bapty@Defra.gsi.gov.uk or by phone on 0117 372 8211
And
Joe Morris at Cranfield University via email at j.morris@cranfield.ac.uk or by phone on 01234 750111.
You can also visit the Cranfield website for any updates and further information on this topic.
Page last modified:
6 March 2007
Page published: 6 March 2007