LANING LIFE

by Lauren Eaton

Read about green laning as seen through Lauren ‘Sunshine’ Eaton's windscreen at The Green Lane Association, and find out what’s hot, or not, in the laning world each month. Enjoy!

I can’t believe that I’m writing the Christmas issue already! This year has flown by in the blink of an eye, mainly because it has been such a busy year that I’ve barely had time to stand back and take stock of all the amazing things that have been achieved.

2021 has without any exaggeration been the busiest and best for GLASS yet, and with plans for 2022 already in place we can only continue to build on the foundations we have put in place over the last 12 months.

Thanks to membership booming over the last couple of years, we have been catapulted into a far stronger financial position and been able to take on more people to help which has allowed us to improve on many areas of the organisation, but also take on far more legal cases than ever before.

Read on to find out more about what we have been up to.

See you in court!

Since Ally McBeal first stepped into a court room, legal processes have been granted an undeserved sense of drama and glamour. I can truthfully say that these processes (nor me for that matter) come close to glamorous, but they can be essential when it comes to protecting our rights of way.

Our main challenge has been people power. Yes, we have more members than ever before, but rights of way is an extremely niche area of expertise so finding people who can lead complex or legal cases, or have the time to on a voluntary basis, hasn’t been easy; in fact it proved almost impossible.

Legal cases can take months, years even, and they involve lots of mid-week meetings, research, and focus. This of course is on top of all the thousands of tasks that go into running the organisation, coordinating in excess of 200 volunteers, keeping the membership system and Trailwise2 running smoothly, and continually improving our member resources.

Expecting anyone to be able to handle that sort of workload around a day job, family, and a personal life was never going to be possible, particularly now we have so many members relying on us.

To ensure that we can keep on top of our ever-increasing case load - which currently stands at 10 live legal cases, another 8 waiting in the wings, plus several large physical projects, and all the day to day stuff - we have taken two experienced members on full time.

Having donated thousands of voluntary hours over the years, and having worked tirelessly for GLASS during furlough, we suddenly realised that if we lost those who are willing and able to represent us at this level we would be taking a huge step backwards. Thankfully we have now secured our future by bringing people on board who are focused and dedicated to continuing our work.

Teamwork making the dream work

We brought more members into the fold too. We took on several new Executive Officers, a dozen new reps, several dozen new assistant reps, and more than tripled our number of Volunteer Lengthsmen in the first month of relaunching the scheme.

We also launched our Tour Guide affiliation scheme, created an Accessibility Team to represent the rights of disabled users, took on a Social Media Officer, and welcomed on board vehicle manufacturers who will provide memberships at the point of sale.

Here’s a quick run down of the last 12 months:

• Membership increase 40%

• Assistant reps - 144% increase

• Police memberships - 220% increase

• Commercial and affiliate members stayed constant. Despite the challenges they faced they stuck with us!

• TW2 user comments - 68% increase

• Registered TW2 users - 50% increase

• 80 lanes added to TW2

• Number of current legal cases - 10

• Number of potential legal cases - 8

• Social media accounts - 30% increase in pages and groups

• Main Facebook page followers up 21%

• Daily social media reach up 229%

• 34 press appearances

Friends in high places

On top of all this we made massive headway with external organisations. While the legal stuff is vitally important, creating and maintaining relationships with other organisations and authorities is just as crucial.

Professional memberships aren’t simple things to attain. As well as a cost, our work is scrutinised prior to membership, and then continually throughout, but we’re pleased to report that our new memberships were supported by references from authorities we have directly worked with on projects.

GLASS as an organisation, or one or more of its Executive Officers, currently holds membership to and/or a role within the following organisations:

Membership of professional bodies:

• LARA - Land Access and Recreation Association

• IPROW - The Institute of Public Rights of Way and Access Management

• The Sports and Recreation Alliance

• The National Council of Volunteer Organisations

• Membership of rights of way organisations

• The Open Spaces Society

• The Trail Riders Fellowship

• The Ramblers

• The British Horse Society

• ScotWays - The Scottish Rights of Way and Access Society

Getting physical

Of course, we have continued to be active at grass roots level too. Our reps have been tirelessly working away on physical projects that range from litter picks, clearances, surface repairs, user counts, gate and other furniture replacement, and even project managing large works as a direct contractor to local authorities.

We now have dedicated contractors, and the ability to advise on, or even take ownership of, large scale works for County Councils. Our current big project is a byway in Leicestershire that has seen no maintenance in many years, and as usual a lack of maintenance attracts those who are looking for a challenge.

Spring Lane is part residential street, one stretch provides access to properties, although these residents now struggle to access their homes and essential services are refusing to drive to them. The centre section is a beautiful woodland trail with several bridleways and footpaths leading from it (and at the moment a rather large bomb hole right in the middle of it), and the final section runs alongside a field but is impassable to most 4x4s.

At just over 2.5km long it will be a pretty significant job to reinstate the surface so that it is suitable for access by road car for residents, and for the nearby equestrian centres to use regularly, not to mention allow walkers, 4x4s, and motorcycles to return once the closure for works has been lifted.

It took some considerable time to liaise with a number of organisations and get things moving, we did have to start legal action at one point too, but the aim of the game is to always work together and avoid litigation.

Thankfully due to a lot of negotiation, in this case we are now official contractors to the council, and our preferred contractor will be carrying out the work during December while we liaise with him, the local residents, police, and the Council Access Officer as project managers.

Work continues with National Park Authorities, Councils, those responsible for land with special designations, and landowners in numerous areas.

The Lake District will see remedial works thanks to our Cumbria Team, we have several projects ongoing in Denbighshire in SSSI and AONB areas, work continues on Salisbury Plain and Yorkshire, and meetings are planned in Lancashire and Conwy to name just a few.

Drone photo courtesy of Mark Rotheram (Cheshire rep)

Looking to the future

Now we have secured our future with dedicated staff, we have been able to plan ahead. One major area we will be making headway with is addressing the lack of rights of way training available to organisations and authorities.

I have already mentioned that rights of way is a niche area of expertise, but this applies doubly to green lanes. The resources that already exist for users invariably miss motorised use out!

The Police receive no rights of way training, and professionals within the field rely on experience or related qualifications rather than any form of formal academic pathway specific to the subject. This has led to several requests that GLASS provide information and/or training to bridge this gap, so we are working hard on creating a suite of training and advice guides.

Training isn’t limited to external improvements either, our professional and organisation memberships have opened up a wealth of seminars and courses to us that will be attended to increase our knowledge and understanding of all aspects of rights of way.

While we have made leaps and bounds when it comes to forming new relationships UK wide, there is still work to be done.

Some local authorities, Police forces, and other organisations are extremely proactive, but now we need to focus on those who aren’t. Armed with examples of positive working partnerships and projects we will be communicating the success stories directly to those we would like to get on board.

We have plans to forge new working relationships with several disability organisations too. Accessibility is vital to those with additional needs, and discrimination is illegal in the UK. We want to ensure that laning is protected and made available to all. As a hobby it is unique in that outwardly there is no obvious indication of ability, and that allows users with more complex conditions to enjoy recreation and green spaces independently with few special measures and on an equal level that other activities cannot provide.

Our Accessibility Team is run by members with additional needs as well as professional experience in the field who are acutely aware of the benefit accessing the countryside and socialising with others has to those who cannot, or face challenges to, walking, horse riding, and cycling. Laning allows people to participate on an equal basis, unlike other forms of travel it is driving ability, rather than personal ability, that makes the hobby accessible.

We will begin the new year with a new website, in fact it should be live by the time you get to read this. The new site will be integrated to make the sign up and user processes more user friendly, and it will have a new shop. It will also have new content to reflect our new schemes and initiatives, areas for professionals/authorities, and will be continually added to as our new resources become available.

Give yourselves a pat on the back!

We could not have done all this without every single member. It is you who make the organisation what it is today, who fund our projects, support our work, and give us the motivation to continue doing what we do. So, a big thank you!

Want to join the team?

We are always happy to welcome anyone on board who would like to help, but we also understand that time is short when it comes to volunteering. Simply being a member is a huge help, if you know someone who may appreciate joining we have a Christmas voucher scheme that can be found here https://www. glass-uk.org/voucher.html

If you have a few hours to spare, or have one or more favourite lanes that you visit regularly, why not adopt a lane(s) by signing up to our Volunteer Lengthsman Scheme (VLS)? Simply input the TWUID(s) of the lanes you wish to adopt in MemberMojo - https:// membermojo.co.uk/glass-uk/yourmembership/ details and we’ll be in touch. More information can be found in the members’ resources area of the website.

If you’d like to get more involved, we’re always looking for people to join our rep teams. Even if we already have a rep for a county that doesn’t mean you’re not welcome to help out. Either contact the rep directly or email the Regional Coordinator if you are interested. You can find the rep job description in the members’ area of the website.

If you have a particular skill that you think may be useful to us, please do get in touch! Skills such as social media content creation, public speaking, law, admin, IT, photography and more are all vital to the day to day running of GLASS.

We welcome applications from anyone and are proud to offer equal opportunities to all without discrimination to age, gender, race, religion, sex, marital status, pregnancy/maternity, health conditions or disability.

That’s all from me this year folks, and what a year it has been! I would like to wish you all a very merry and safe Christmas on behalf of all of us here at GLASS, and say another thank you for all your support. We’ll see you in 2022!

Happy laning!

Lauren x