Lancashire County Council’s Regulatory Committee met on Wednesday 26 June 2024 to discuss a range of issues relating to public rights of way in Lancashire. The committee considered 8 applications for changes to public rights of way, as well as reviewing guidance provided to Councillors on how to make decisions about them.

The next meeting of the Full Council was scheduled for Thursday 27 June 2024, but was cancelled.

Changes to Public Rights of Way

The committee considered 8 applications for changes to public rights of way, including applications to divert, extinguish and create new public rights of way. The committee approved all of the applications, subject to there being no objections during the consultation period.

Ellel Quarry

One of the applications considered by the committee was for the diversion of two public footpaths at Ellel Quarry. The application was made because the current route of the footpaths is considered to be unsafe, as it runs along the only access road to the quarry, and through the middle of the working quarry.

Currently the public footpath runs on the only access road to the quarry, then along the perimeter of the quarried site (now being infilled), through woods and then across part of the quarried site, before going through the grounds of Ellel Crag.

The proposed diversion would create a new route for the footpaths that would run through woodland away from the quarry operations. The proposed route would:

start at the same point but enter woods adjacent to the access track, then would divert onto an existing track away from the perimeter edge of the quarried site, before returning to the existing route, to then divert across pasture, removing it from the vicinity of the quarried site and property.

The Chair of the committee expressed the view that the proposed route was not optimal, but his proposed amendment to reject the application on these grounds was defeated. The committee voted to approve the diversion, subject to there being no objections received during the consultation period.

Guidance for Councillors

The committee also reviewed guidance provided to Councillors on how to apply the law relating to public rights of way, and voted to approve a change to the guidance to take into account changes to the law made in 2017.

The guidance in question is provided to Councillors to help them to apply the law relating to public rights of way. In particular, the guidance on how to take biodiversity into account when making decisions about public rights of way was out of date. This section of the guidance had not been updated to reflect changes made by an amendment to the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006. The committee voted to amend Annex B of the guidance to reflect these changes in law.

This email has been prepared by The Open Council Network Agent to help residents understand what their council has been doing in the last week.