Securing a public right of way to so-called “open country” in England and Wales has cost at least £500 per walker, according to Strutt & Parker, the national property consultants.

Last week, the Countryside Agency was criticised by the National Audit Office for allowing the cost of securing access under the Countryside Rights of Way Act (CROW Act) to more than double from a budgeted £28 million to a final cost of £69 million. The NAO investigation also pointed out that when they visited a sample of sites they found very few members of the public actually using them.

“The NAO experience very much reflects our experience on the ground,” says Nick Watson, who heads Strutt & Parker’s Land Research Group. “Indeed, we think the only people currently taking advantage of large areas of the new right to roam are members of the Ramblers’ Association and even if all 141,000 of their members have enjoyed a walk that still works out at almost £500 per walker.”

Mr Watson believes the Countryside Agency approach to identifying areas of “mountain, moor, heath and downland” over which the public should enjoy a legal right of way was flawed from the outset.

“The first problem is that these four types of landscape were defined in a rather arbitrary manner and then each site was individually identified in a way that had precious little to do with the way that the public actually visit the countryside.”

“Survey after survey has shown that the majority of visitors to the countryside do not venture that far from their car and want to enjoy a circular walk. But because each potential CROW Act site was identified primarily by the vegetation that covered it, no thought was ever put into how the public was actually going to use it.”

“No one ever stopped to ask the basic question of was it somewhere the public would enjoy visiting? For example, in the south of England thousands of acres of downland have now been identified as “open countryside” despite the fact they are far too steep to walk on. And there are similar anomalies all over the country.”

The huge cost over-run on implementing the CROW Act also reflects fundamental problems in the site identification process itself, Mr Watson believes.

“It started off as an almost academic exercise in remote mapping with researchers identifying potential sites by aerial photographs and existing maps but, again, without any thought be given to what the site was like on the ground.”

“Then the whole process of site notification was confrontational rather than consensual. Most landowners had to find out for themselves if their land had been designated as possible “open country” and, if they disagreed with that designation, they had no option but to enter a complex and potentially expensive appeals process.”

Some mistakes costs tens of thousands of pounds of tax-payers’ money to put right, he says.

“We acted for the owners of one ancient deer park which had been identified as “open country” despite the fact that it clearly wasn’t mountain, moor, heath or downland and probably hadn’t been for about 800 years.”

“But, of course, the family owners had to take a legal threat to their conditions of ownership seriously and we put together an appeal that was swiftly won and with costs awarded against the Countryside Agency. That appeal alone cost the tax-payer tens of thousands of pounds and, in this case, the real irony was that the public already enjoyed access by permission to the deer park anyway.”

“The CROW Act has proved to be a very blunt instrument and I do hope the Countryside Agency has learnt from the experience, particularly now it is turning its attentions to the nation’s coastline. If more taxpayers’ money is to be spent giving the public a right of way to Britain’s cliffs, dunes and beaches, then I’m sure a more intelligent, less adversarial approach will prove to be both more effective and far cheaper.”