Council asked to apologise for state of footpaths

Calls have been made for Powys County Council to say sorry for the poor state of paths in the county.

At a meeting of the council’s Planning, Taxi Licensing and Rights of Way committee councillors received the annual report on the work of the Local Access Forum (LAF) for last year, 2023/2024.

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LAF chairman, Graham Taylor said: “Without being too melodramatic I think the council should apologise to the younger generation that it let its Rights of Way (ROW) get to such a bad position.

“The forum has been pressing the council to address the parlous state of ROW in Powys.

“There’s currently 10,000 outstanding issues to deal with and a lot of things are not reported.”

He said that 1,538 new problems were reported during 2023/2024, and 257 were addressed, some of which explained Mr Taylor would have been work from the previous year.

Mr Taylor said: “This is in stark contrast to the national park (Bannau Brycheiniog National Park Authority), in the same year they had 407 new problems and dealt with 497 –  they had some from the previous year.

“What we have here in Powys is essentially a two tier system. if you live in the national park, you will find the rights of way are generally in pretty good condition, well-marked and signposted.

“If you live outside (the national park) the situation is extremely poor.

“The national park is facing the same financial issues that other public bodies face.”

Mr Taylor said that the national park makes “really good use” of the volunteers it has to maintain rights of way and he encouraged the council to make better use of the 200 or so volunteers it has to help out.

The feedback he received from volunteers at forum meetings is that they: “could do more” but are not asked to.

Mr Taylor explained that the council should be looking to review its Rights of Way Improvement Plan which was last agreed in 2018.

This would need to include and independent condition survey – which had once been an annual requirement for councils.

He believed this would show where and what the problems are.

Mr Taylor said: “We should commit to a five year programme to make sure that 50 per cent of the ROW are open and easy to use.”

He explained that the survey from 2007 said that 46 per cent of the ROW in Powys were open and easy to use and the target at that time had been to take the figure up to 80 per cent by 2018.

When the survey had been done in 2018 the figure had dropped to 36 per cent.

But to make these improvements money would need to be found, and Mr Taylor suggested a variety of funding pots that could be explored.

The committee thanked him for the report.