Pressure to step up Herefordshire path opening (From Hereford Times)

Pressure to step up Herefordshire path opening

11:00am Wednesday 11th February 2009 in News

HEREFORDSHIRE Council has to step up its efforts to open footpaths and other rights of way across the county, a key committee heard.

An estimate of the time it will take to clear the current backlog of 97 modification orders already tops 10 years, with seven or eight new applications coming in a year. Another 82 public path orders are still outstanding, with the time it takes to get them done dependant on the extent of opposition.

The council’s community services scrutiny committee was told that it currently took 350 hours of officer time to push just one modification order through the “sheer unbelievable enormity”

of the process – and only if that officer had no other demands on their time.

Right now, the council can only commit two full-time officers to complete such applications, and they are presently pressed to finish four each a year.

The figures prompted the committee to call for an “urgent review” of the allocation of resources to public rights of way.