CLA opposes Labour's right to roam plan

The Country Land and Business has urged Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer to scrap his pledge of an English “right to roam”.

Sir Keir has promised that a Labour govern ment would give the public unrestricted access over much of the countryside. But the CLA says the policy would have unknown consequences for nature, farming and public safety.

CLA president Mark Tufnell said the plan ig nored the need for such land to be protected for the purposes of food production, natural habitats and the vast array of environmental projects be ing undertaken by landowners.

“This act feels entirely incompatible with Sir Keir’s claim that Labour is becoming the party of the countryside,” said Mr Tufnell.

“We already have a fine network of public access, 140,000 miles of public footpaths in England and Wales, 3.5 million acres of public access land and significantly more in permissive access.”

An opinion poll commissioned by the CLA last year found that the public is sceptical about a right to roam. Some 69% of the public said they felt walkers should stick to footpaths and areas of access land, whereas only 21% were in favour of a right to roam.

The CLA says walkers should stick to footpaths and access land.

We were asked to pollard some well and truly established trees near Evesham. Their overhang was becoming detrimental to the free flow of the ditches and tractor cab paintwork.

This was a perfect opportunity for us to break out the 21t excavator and our tree shears. Didn't take too long to get things ship shape.

On the way back to the yard we had a call to see if we could help at Stratford Agri Market with tidying up the roadside trees and ditch. Being only about a mile from our head office and as we were literally driving past the door, we could hardly say no.

Once the trees were thinned out sufficiently we could get on with the ditching.