Cornwall County
Council is now over two years into its £2.01M programme
of improvements (PPIP) to our bridleways and footpaths
.
All bridleways and footpaths
have been allocated a priority status of "Gold", "Silver"
or "Bronze". Over 50% of paths are Gold. Only Gold paths are being
renovated under the PPIP programme. More information on
the County Council web Site http://www.cornwall.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=15663
The work is scheduled on a parish
by parish basis. For the latest schedule on when parishes are being worked on
see CC
Parish Timetable
The programme has fallen behind
the Original
Schedule and we
do have some concerns as to whether the programme is going to deliver all the
improvements we had anticipated. However, despite this, much good work has been
achieved in many parishes with fantastic renovations achieved on many bridleways..
The situation, as we understand
it, is as follows:
Most sensible bridleways
should be covered by the programme.
The budget available
for the improvements is on the tight side and more difficult and costly to
deliver than anticipated in some instances, in light of this the County Council
has looked closely at the issue and tells us that it now has much better budget
managemnt to give better value for money.
The record of improvement
done on ealy work was somewhat patchy but the County Council tell us that
they now have now have a “12 month warranty” period in place with
their agents, Cormac, so if there are issues they should be able to fix them.
One of our major concerns
is easily and safely openable bridleway gates and their were some issues in
relation to this on earlty work done. We have discussed this with the County
Council and they assure us this issue will be addressed in future work.
Equally we have found
that both surface and head clearance has not been addressed on some bridleways
supposedly completed, if outstanding issues are reported to the County Council
they assure us they will be looked at..
Although the County
Council seem unable to make any guarantee about the state of 'Gold' bridleways
in parishes that have had their renovations completed they they have assured
us that "following PPIP in a Parish, the vast majority of issues on
Gold routes of a physical nature should have been resolved and the network
for that Parish improved. There may be outstanding enforcement issues since
we don’t have the resources to deal with the enforcement issues at the
same rate as PPIP."
We (bhsaccesscornwall) are doing
our best to check that Gold bridleways supposedly completed under PPIP have
in fact had the basic requirements for our safety satisfactorily addressed.
ie Safe surface, safe openable clear gates, safe cleared width and head height.
We cannot personnally inspect every bridleway in the County. We therefore will
rely on you the riders who ride them to help us. The County Council tell us
they are working hard to improve their problem reporting and management system
which should enable them to give us better information in the future.