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See also our pages on
Aldenham 31A and on
Foot & Mouth |
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News items in year 2002
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'Hoogstraten' case won November 2002
Kate Ashbrook has won her case in the Court of Appeal. She had brought the case in her own name. Though referred to by some as the Hoogstraten case it was in fact against East Sussex County Council.
The full legal judgement can be found at: The appeal judges had been asked to adjudicate on some other matters in the lower court judge's decision or at least to comment. They did the latter, saying they thought that judge was wrong. That is helpful as it should reduce the damage that would have occurred if nothing had been said about the other judge's statements, a pity they didn't expand their reasons more though.
It is expected that authorities will be more
cautious in supporting landholder diversions in future, and where they do
decide to support them they may be more willing to try to make them more
convenient and comfortable for the public. We must, as ever, make sure
they know we will be expecting this. |
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4 BADFA people on zapper course October 2002
Four BADFA members took part in a Countryside Management Service (CMS) organised brush cutter and strimmer course at Barnet on 19 October. Heidi of CMS, above, organised it. Chris, David and Steve took part as did BADFA member Anthony Boswell from Chorleywood, wearing his Chiltern Society 'hat'. Two others took part. Despite BADFA people having used strimmers and brushcutters (strimmers
with metal blades) for over ten years, CMS had decided that any Parish
Path Partnership brushcutting work sponsored by them should on health and
safety grounds be done only by people who had attended a course. Our work
with brushcutters is mostly local, Steve's team on Bushey 12 improvement.
Chris does odd lengths in Bushey and Aldenham if he notices that they are
bad. It's good to be qualified now! |
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Membership
hits 300 October 2002 In a fitting tribute to the work done by Norman Hedges our membership now stands at 300. The new members in fact joined just before he died. When our membership reached 200 we thought we had done well, and at 250
we thought it had reached a plateau. And here we are with 300. |
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Today is a sad day for BADFA. Norman Hedges, our treasurer and membership secretary has gone. He had been worried about his health a bit recently, and was due for a hospital check-up next Monday. He had, it is believed, died in his sleep on Friday night. He was 81. He was a founder member of BADFA, back in 1991. He has been largely responsible for the remarkable membership numbers that we have, very close to 300. He also served all these years as treasurer. And as if that wasn't enough he got involved in many other of our activities, such as convening the walks sub-committee, sending out walks reminders and helping plan the Parish Path Partnership work. In recent years he has done less physical work, the last heavy physical work was a few years ago when he helped build two kissing gates. But only a few months ago he was out with our chairman planning improvements to our paths near the Aerodrome. Clearly this wasn't enough for him, since he also worked tirelessly for Bushey Museum on it seems any number of projects, grave plots in Bushey Churchyard, work with the artefacts, cataloguing maps, sorting the late Gawan Vesey's vast photographic slide collection, writing a historical note on the Horticultural Society and goodness knows what else. Recently he was working on trials of databases for the Museum. But there is more: he actively supported the Purcell School to the extent of sponsoring several foreign students, and in some cases making over part of his house for them (and in one case, the parent too) to stay. Currently he is sponsoring someone from a London music academy. He was busy right up to the end. Twice in the last fortnight he went up to Bletchley, to the wartime secret operations place, where he had worked during the second world war on the 'bombe': the machine used to decode the German secret messages. He had thought he had just been asked up there to demonstrate how the machine (they have a replica) was operated, but he was surprised to be asked to give a short talk. And to six different groups of visitors. And he did the same last Tuesday. On Thursday he entertained his London student to lunch, on Friday he and our chairman went over the accounts and future plans for BADFA's work programme for 2002/3 under the Parish Paths Partnership. In the afternoon he went to work at the Museum, but cut that short because some works taking place made work difficult. Tireless is a word that comes to mind. Speaking personally, he was great to try ideas out on, he
gave great, though sometimes critical, support. And he was a real friend,
he was very supportive when I was horizontal with a bad leg some years
ago; and there are not many houses where when the front door is opened you can
step inside without being invited, Norman's was one of them. Norman lost his wife some fourteen years ago, but he has three sons, and BADFA extends our condolences to them. c.b. |
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July 2002 Success - Vodaphone's appeal turned down.  The view that BADFA helped save. We understand that the appeal by Vodaphone against the refusal by Hertsmere of Vodaphone's plan to put a new mast and building up against our path Bushey 12 (Finch Lane to Jewish Cemetery) has been REFUSED by the inspector. Warm thanks are due to Mike Rachlin, the
Hertsmere officer, supported by councillors. The Open Spaces Society was
also active in opposing this barmy location. But especial thanks are due
to our members who filled in numerous postcards
and to those who wrote letters objecting to the
proposal. Thanks and well done. |
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July
2002 
BADFA members will know that the Sacred Heart
School governors had agreed to allow BADFA to build a three metre wide
path at the bottom of their playing field in exchange for us raising the
funds for the fence. There are hurdles to cross at County but we have
heard of no problems yet. Since part of the woodyard is next to the school
and part of the actually used path is on their land, our Chairman, Chris
Beney, had tried to get the Woodyard people to agree the use of a modest
bit of their land for improvement to the path. For one reason or another
nothing came of it so on 11th July he exercised the right to speak for
three minutes at the planning meeting which was considering the Woodyard's
application to build houses on half their land. He suggested that if the
councillors were undecided whether to grant permission then perhaps if the
owners would give these bits of path that might give enough overall
community gain to approve the proposal. After the meeting Chris spoke to the owner, who hadn't been aware of the path issue and was receptive of the idea. The full text of Chris' 3 minute talk is
available here. |
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July 2002 County destroys part of a public footpath In Aldenham, in the field high above the sunken road called Common Lane, there is a public footpath. The County Council, whilst not always very good at recognising a public path when they see one, cannot have failed in this case to know the path was there, it was after all on their own definitive map. But they have allowed their contractors who have spent months urbanising the lane with kerbs (and bog standard ugly kerbs at that) to excavate the side of the path away leaving it less than three foot wide and with an unfenced six foot drop down to the roadway below. They have been informed of the issue. It is ironic that this is only feet away from path Aldenham 31A which has a long history of mismanagement. |
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May
2002
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Sally Banks' Report 2004 |
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About 17 people attended the John Sears 2002 Study day 2002 at Bushey Museum and Oxhey Woods |
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We reported in February (below) that Watford Borough and the local police wanted to stop up a link to path Garston 7. They have now (3rd May 2002) backed off the original proposal which we told them was unlawful and are using the Traffic Regulation legislation which was never intended for this purpose. It could be a terrible precedent if left unchallenged. BADFA of course, and the Open Spaces Society, have made formal objection as well as contacting County Hall, who appear to be concerned about it too.
The Countryside Agency has finished the first stage of its investigation into "Lost Ways", public paths not recorded on the definitive map.
The consortium they employed has identified that some 20,000km of public paths remain unrecorded which represents an extra 10% to the current 190,000km of paths. The Countryside Agency says that is 'astonishing', BADFA is not at all astonished, we have been saying that the Countryside Agency's figures for rights of way have been ignoring these sorts of numbers for years.
The report says that many researchers are frustrated with inadequate legislation and improper weighting of evidence by Highway Authorities and the Planning Inspectorate.
The Consultants have recommended that a Research Unit be set up with 9 sub-regions each with a coordinator and a small team of support staff.
They have also recommended introducing a Best Value Performance Indicator for Definite Map work be introduced to help counter the lack of national standards and the current low priority perception of this work by local authorities.
The Countryside Agency will now consider the options with a view to making recommendations on the best way forward to the Agency board.
A copy of the initial findings are available at www.iprow.co.uk/docs/lostways.pdf
We reported last year that Watford Borough and the local police wanted to stop up a link to path Garston 7. They published the proposal at some cost, despite there being no lawful way, at least to our understanding, that it could in fact be implemented. That is they appeared to be proposing to act unlawfully.
The published document promised the relevant documents would be available for public inspection at the Town Hall. When we went to inspect them they were not available, but an officer promised to send copies. No copies arrived, we have chased up with no response so far.
We
suspect that the proposal is withdrawn, but do not know. It reflects badly
on Watford's competence and it may be no bad thing that the Borough plans
to give up the agency for rights of way work. A good job they have no
whelk stalls to run.
BADFA has been working with County Hall on the obstruction of the public way at Munden drive on the A41 by massive new locked gates. We have been exceedingly modest in our demands and even agreed a compromise deal very favourable to the underlying landholder. Part of that deal was that the proposed new kissing gate should be at least to the new British Standard. It isn't, though not by much. It is also identifiably dangerous. All it needs to solve both these problems is for a sharp lower extension to be ground off. County has asked for it to be done but the landholder has not done so despite ample opportunity. County also appear to be spending money considering ways of keeping cycles out. If this were any longer a serious problem to path users that might be in order, but it seems to be substantially for the landholder. To the extent that that is true, that is misuse of County funds.
