An Update on BOATS - Good News!

by Rosemary Horsey, Vice President of CPRE Hampshire

At the time of our last report on this contentious matter in the Autumn 2005 newsletter, the Natural Environment and Rural Communities (NERC) Bill was working its way through Parliament. Part 6 of the Bill was intended by the Government to end the process whereby modern vehicles could gain legal access to green lanes on the basis of historic use by horse and cart. However, as originally drafted, Part 6 would have been entirely ineffective as all existing claims for new Byways Open to All Traffic (BOATs) would have been exempt from the new legislation and the offroading lobby had been given time to submit claims on all eligible tracks. Hampshire County Council was one of the authorities which had been flooded with applications for new BOATs.

However the situation has now changed dramatically for the better. An alliance of seventeen organisations was formed, including CPRE, and was called the Green Lanes Protection Group, in order to try to ensure that the new legislation did achieve its objective. A few very knowledgeable and dedicated people, negotiating on behalf of the Group, worked extremely hard over many months meeting the Minister, lobbying MPs and peers and holding discussions with Defra. Thanks to their efforts and a remarkable cross-party consensus in both Houses of Parliament, a cut-off date of 20 January 2005 was finally agreed: only those claims for new BOATs which had been lodged before this would be exempt from the new legislation. This meant that in our county alone about 120 BOAT applications would come under the NERC Act legislation: almost all of these were on RUPPs which have now automatically become Restricted Byways and cannot be used legally by motorised vehicles.

In the previous year we had been contacted by several dozen parish councils and private individuals in Hampshire who were very worried indeed by local BOAT claims and, as soon as the NERC Act had received Royal Assent on 30 March, we took great pleasure in sending out to them all a report telling them the good news. This report, slightly adapted, is now on the CPRE Hampshire website (see NERC Act Article).

In Hampshire a couple of dozen claims for new BOATs were lodged before the cut-off date of 20 January 2005 and these will have to be dealt with according to the old legislation of the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981. Unfortunately Hampshire County Council has no choice in the matter and is legally obliged to process these earlier applications through to conclusion. Eleven of them are awaiting investigation and the remainder are under way. A list of these is available and we would be very pleased to hear from anyone with knowledge of the areas concerned.

November 2006