The right of access to open countryside : Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Countryside Agency

Introduced under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, the new right of access (commonly known as the 'right to roam') was phased in between September 2004 and October 2005, giving walkers the right to walk on large areas of the English countryside without having to keep to specified paths. 865,000 hectares of land (around 6.5 per cent of all land in England) is in practice open to the public and of this, 733,000 hectares is land to which no right of access previously existed.

The NAO report finds that the right to roam was successfully introduced by the Countryside Agency in conjunction with Defra two months ahead of target, with easy access to over 90 per cent of the sites tested.

There were initial problems with the countryside access website established to provide public information about the scheme, relating to the quality of online maps of access land and to the search function, but these had begun to improve by April 2006.

The cost of implementing the open access programme was almost double the original estimate, largely due to a failure to pilot test the implementation of the scheme and a lack of adequate project management. In total, the cost of implementation is estimated to be GBP 69 million and ongoing running costs are expected to be around GBP 13 million in 2006-07.

Although the benefits of the scheme cannot be easily quantified in financial terms, the NAO's initial assessment of the new right of access finds that it passed the key test of whether walkers can use it.

Recommendations made include that in order to improve public transport facilities to enable people on low incomes and from urban areas to have more opportunities to use their new right of access, the Agency should explore with local councils the cost-effectiveness of diverting weekend bus services past open access land.