The Keys of the Castle Have Been Handed to the Turnips. the General Public Request The
“The keys of the castle have been handed to the turnips.” The general public request the Government takes control of DEFRA.
Dr Richard Connaughton
Proud of your home and secure garden where your children play? The arrival of a letter from your Council could soon shake you out of your comfort zone.
Having achieved the last of the Rights of Way major objectives, the Right to Roam and the Coastal Path, has prompted Natural England, supported by DEFRA, to dream up a new initiative.
Their solution, described by their opponents as the “Lost Ways Scam”, is to claim the existence of 20,000 paths and bridleways out there among you waiting to be identified.
The underlying reasons for the Access Industry’s move to nationalise private property is to secure and enhance their Government employees’ jobs and to widen the present imbalance of favour between activists and property owners. A positive solicitor’s search report is unreliable.
According to an ancient maxim, “once a footpath, always a footpath”. Common Law requires a common sense interpretation, yet the continuing presence of this law on the books means it has to be taken seriously meaning you could be vulnerable.
The quango Natural England, who have worked closely with DEFRA on the lost ways initiative, set out their proposals in their Report “Stepping Forward” which was followed by DEFRA’s sympathetic Impact Assessment, “Simplifying and Streamlining Rights of Way”. The consultation period, overseen by an in-house Civil Service Reform Projects Team, ended on Monday, 6 August 2012.
Responding to public cynicism that Lost Ways could exist in any quantity, “why have they not been claimed before now?”, Natural England was prepared to be flexible. If only 10,000 exist, they said, it will require a quadrupling of the present levels of support.
Questions have been raised as to the identity of the Government representative who authorised the Civil Service to take charge of their own, narrow reform.
In August 2011, Henry Hobhouse, grandson of the new post-Second World War Rights of Way doctrine, argues convincingly that his grandfather’s ideas have been hijacked by the unscrupulous. In his suppressed Report, he set out the full extent of reform necessary for the Access industry.
The anticipated massive vote of support in favour of DEFRA’s ‘consultation’ is far from a true measure of support but rather a reflection of the disparity in levels of communications and organisation between a David and Goliath. David is at a perpetual disadvantage to a monolithic group of opponents known collectively as The Fraternity.
The Fraternity comprises Government Access Officials and their associates to be found in: DEFRA, The Planning Inspectorate, Natural England and the Access Organisations. The Fraternity’s boiler room is the County Council’s Access Community with further interests and representation possibly evident in Districts, Parishes and among grass roots activists.
The nub of the problem lies in the general public’s almost total exclusion from even-handedness within the Fraternity’s territory. For example, when it is discovered a claim has been made against a member of the public’s home, that family is entirely responsible for fighting their corner. We will show how these unfortunates are often obliged to do so with one hand tied behind their backs.
County Officials frequently act as a brake on progress. They are inclined to give priority to cases where there are identifiable access benefits whereas they will invariably mark down the processing of defended cases.
Home owners’ opponents will frequently be representatives of the Access Organisations who contribute nothing towards Councils’ costs whereas defenders begin on the slippery slope of legal costs which can lead to bankruptcy or worse. There are cases where individuals who are unequal to the stresses and strains, the absence of help and guidance, go on to take their own lives.
Access Officials are technically advisers to County Councils’ elected members. In reality they wield more power than they should. Appellants can face calculated and remorseless opposition up to and including the Roads and Rights of Way Committees. Here an Order will often be made on merit and on their behalf.
Until 2000, there was in existence an Independent Lord Chancellor’s Panel of Inspectors who stood out as the solitary exception to the Fraternity’s seamless, top-down dominance.
It was also in 2000 that the Human Rights Act 1998 came into English Law. Article 6(1) of that Act promises citizens the right to a fair, impartial, independent Tribunal. The Government then acted to compromise the new law, removing the Lord Chancellor’s Independent Inspectors and replacing them almost entirely with former Rights of Way Officers whose careers, mindsets and example challenged any claim they might wish to argue of impartiality.
There is a principle that Policy Makers should not act as Decision Takers. That had now come about. The new cadre of Inspectors came under the direction of the Secretary of State or, more precisely, from among other colleagues within the Fraternity. They are not Independent.
The Inspectors, who appear not to have one legal qualification between them, chair Local Public Inquiries. The law requires a Tribunal. A Tribunal would normally see either a solicitor or barrister in the Chair appointed by the Lord Chancellor. In short, the whole edifice is illegal and has been for the past 12 years. The interesting question is, what is to be the nature of the future disposal of cases denied justice in illegally convened Inquiries?
The frequent protests to have arisen have been handled by the Inspectors’ colleagues. There has been a comprehensive breakdown in trust in the present system. The concept of Localism has been irretrievably damaged. Orders made by elected members within the responsible County and District committees have been regularly overturned by the Secretary of State’s solitary, illegal nominee.
In response to the protests made of Inspectors’ decisions, DEFRA has said Inspectors do not give reasons for their decisions. The disadvantaged are pointed towards the costly route to the High Court to seek permission for Judicial Review. DEFRA opposes these Court appearances before a Judge. One is on record as having said of the Inspectors, his tribunes of fact, that they are entitled to come to the decisions they do.
The mechanics of the law is stacked against the appellants. There is no equality within the law. The instrument most commonly used to cheat appellants of their rights is Section 31 of The Highways Act 1980, also known as the Twenty Year Rule.
Representatives of Access Organisations have been observed presenting multiple claims to Inspectors of over twenty years of uninterrupted use in quantities so large as to overwhelm what a homeowner or farmer can achieve. The claims, many identical, contain no statements of truth and are not given on oath. There is no requirement for these claimants to attend Inquiries or to be available for cross-examination.
Dorset’s Access people said they would oppose our application unless the public emerged ‘as net gainers’. We requested of them local evidence in their keeping – survey cards and any declaration dedicating the Occupation Path through our home for public use – they could not or would not. It is impossible for us to prove a negative.
We encountered anarchy among the County’s Access people and apathy among the senior executives. The former altered both a Consultant’s Report and one of our key documents in such a way as to be of material advantage to the Inspector. The Executive took no action against those who had acted criminally against us.
To conclude on the Lost Ways scam, the worst of the chicanery involved what is described as The Stakeholders’ Working Group (SWG) sponsored by Natural England. We asked DEFRA how much public money had been pumped into this quango. “Don’t know”, they said, “ask Natural England”.
Natural England convened the SWG and appointed every one of its stakeholders. It was made clear to the handpicked at the outset that the outcome required of them was total consensus. Each one dutifully approved every one of the Group’s 32 recommendations. “It was a balanced representation” claimed the Minister, Richard Benyon MP. That was untrue.
The exclusion of the overwhelming majority had been total. Bevis Hughes and Catherine Law, victims from Dartmoor, told DEFRA, “This Report should be disregarded in its entirety. It is not democratic and should be considered fraudulent”.
The sub-plot involved what appeared to be an agreement to stop the recording of any further lost ways in 2026. Tucked away among the 32 proposals were measures which, if adopted, would serve to confirm the SWG as Rights of Ways’ Standing Politburo. All that remains is for the Minister to tell of his intention to accede to the wishes of the masses as summarised to him by DEFRA’s Reform Projects Team.
It is all so Mao. The Organisation and Function of the Fraternity is identical to that of the People’s Republic of China’s Centralised Democracy Model.
As an act of revulsion towards the SWG scam, a dozen victims, drawn from every corner of England, submitted their own personal accounts of the abuse they had suffered. They called themselves the Alternative Stakeholders with the intention of checking the runaway charge of the SWG and to provide ordinary, decent people with the opportunity to have their voices hears. Their difficulty lay in finding anyone who would listen.
Every effort to inform the Secretary of State and Minister of the rampant corruption within their spheres of responsibility failed. It is unclear whether the problem was an unwillingness to hear or their being prevented from hearing by the apparatchiks around them.
An appeal for help was put to the Cabinet Minister responsible for Policy, The Rt Hon Oliver Letwin MP. The Alternative Stakeholders asked for an opportunity to meet the Secretary of State or Minister to tell them what was going on. He wrote, “I am terribly sorry to say that I really do not think it is at all likely that Ministers will be able to do as you suggest”.
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