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Access for Outdoor Recreation in England
and Wales: Production, Consumption and
Markets
Nigel Curry
Countryside and Community Research Unit, Faculty of Environment and
Leisure, Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education,
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, GL50 4AZ, UK
Supply-driven access policies for outdoor recreation in England and Wales have led to
growth in the access resource during the 1990s. This has come about through policy
shifts in agriculture and forestry as well as policies for community participation and
access to open country. Aggregate consumption, however, has remained static. There is
little evidence to suggest any significant increases in outdoor recreation participation
since the late 1970s.This production–consumption imbalance can lead to inefficiencies
in resource allocation, but it also could be considered to be inequitable since the recipi-
ents of state outdoor leisure resources are dominantly the more affluent members of
society. Except at a very small number of renowned sites, carrying capacity is not a
significant issue in England and Wales, given that outdoor recreation resource avail-
ability is generally outstripping consumption. The principal challenge for public
intervention lies in improving information about, awareness of and confidence to use,
the access resource rather than increasing the resource per se. For some provision,
particularly in relation to rural tourism, markets also offer potential for ensuring
resource quality, controlling visitor numbers, stimulating the rural economy and
allowing confident visitor use.
Access to the English and Welsh Countryside: A Supply-Led
Approach
Types of access provision
There is no true wilderness in England and Wales in its commonly understood
international sense (Oelschlaeger, 1991). Neither is there any substantial owner-
ship of land by the state specifically for recreation and access purposes. Land
resources for access to the countryside can therefore be characterised as managed
land in private ownership, or public ownership for some purpose other than
access (for example, forestry). A complex set of arrangements has developed for
access to this land which can be grouped into three broad types: statutory access
or access in perpetuity through law, permitted access through some form of
formal, often legal, agreement between the state and the landholder and
permitted access without any formal agreement. These arrangements are very
variable and, in instances, uncertain. They have grown incrementally both as a
result of public policy and independently of it. Thus there is no overarching
orchestration of provision: it is pluralist both in terms of mechanisms and types
and there are significant variations in the relative importance of these
0966-9582/01/05 0400-17 $20.00/0 © 2001 N. Curry
JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABLE TOURISM Vol. 9, No. 5, 2001
400Recreational Access in England and Wales 401 opportunities within England and Wales. There is no definitive classification of such access opportunities, but a taxonomy is offered in Figure 1. A policy preoccupation with supply Whilst these forms of access have diverse origins, the influence of public policy in provision has been considerable. This has been of three broad types. Firstly policies, in large part during the 1960s and 1970s, were overtly concerned to increase access provision but invariably in the context of a ‘fear of a recreation explosion’ (Dower, 1965). Thus provision, for example, of country parks and picnic sites was in large part diversionary to protect the wider countryside from over-use and despoliation (Fitton, 1979). Secondly, more recent public policy has had objectives other than access as its principal thrust, but has embraced access as a subsidiary objective. This has been the case in agriculture (Raley et al., 1998) and in forestry (Scott, 1997), for example. A third influence of policy has been that it has induced provision by the private and voluntary sectors that is either concordant with the spirit of policy, or that it has been induced in fear of further policy measures becoming more draconian in respect of a further diminution of private property rights (Curry, 1998a). Policy influences, either overt or covert, therefore have been largely supply-side driven. The thrust of increasing access, whether for enjoyment or diversionary purposes, has until very recently, paid scant regard to demand, preferences or aggregate consumption (Curry & Pack, 1993). In a sense, this has been an acceptable position for the policy community. Increasing available access resources was a visible measure of ‘success’ for public agencies: they could be seen and counted on the ground. The policy community had been trained largely as resource managers rather than ‘people’ managers and a natural focus on the resource, rather than the consumer, developed (Herrington, 1978). Four policy trends during the 1990s in England and Wales have served further to develop these supply-side policies for access. The first of these is in agriculture. By the mid-1980s in Europe, food surpluses as a result of the Common Agricultural Policy had become politically embar- rassing and financially unsustainable. Whilst policy reforms since that time have been less than successful at resolving food surpluses and budgetary cost (Winter, 1996), they did promulgate, for the first time, measures for the diversification of agriculture, including a range of environmental measures (Potter, 1998). Access provisions were introduced into most of the resultant environmental schemes either as an afterthought (Environmentally Sensitive Areas and the Countryside Access Scheme) or as a marginal element of the scheme (Countryside Steward- ship, Tir Cymen), that provided further opportunities to supplement farm incomes. Access agreements under all of these schemes, as indeed the schemes themselves, were voluntary. Payments were made to farmers for access by size of holding and not by levels of access consumption. Their uptake has been patchy and monitoring of the schemes has suggested that their use by the public has been variable (Raley et al., 1998). Diversification policies generally have had a seemingly covert effect on access to farmland as well. The amount of permissive access to such land has increased considerably since the beginning of the 1990s (Curry, 1998a) in part, it might be assumed, as a result of a general drive for diversification. This might account for
402 Journal of Sustainable Tourism
I. Statutory access (de jure in perpetuity)
I.1 The rights of way system
I.2 Open country and common land
I.3 Direct state land ownership or purchase with an access use
Forestry Commission Lands
English Nature lands
Country parks
Picnic sites
I.4 Statutory rights of navigation
1.5 Town and village greens
I.6 Water company land
II. Permitted access by formal agreement
II.1 Payment schemes – agri-environmental (de jure by contract)
Countryside Stewardship, access option
Countryside Access Scheme
Environmentally Sensitive Areas, access tier
Tir Cymen
Local ELMs schemes
Under the Farm Woodland Scheme
Under the FC Woodland Grant Scheme (including the Community Woodland
Supplement)
II.2 Payment schemes – other agreements (de jure by contract or statutory agreement)
under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act,1949 and the Wildlife
and Countryside Act, 1981 (for example, Access Agreements and Orders)
highways authority agreements
parish council agreements
under Community Forest Schemes
under the National Forest Scheme
II.3 Non-payment agreements or orders (de jure by contract or in perpetuity)
Through planning agreements
Through public path creation orders
To National Nature Reserves.
II.4 Leases (de jure by contract)
These might relate to things such as Millennium Greens, Community Forests and
the National Forest
III. Permitted access without formal agreement
III.1 De facto access
Free access with the permission of the landowner
Free access without the permission (but with the knowledge) of the landowner
Access with donation box provision or other voluntary payment
Public rights of navigation
III.2 Market provision (de jure by contract)
Access through daily, weekly or annual memberships
Access through ‘pay at the gate’ or ‘pay on the bank’ facilities.
Figure 1 A taxonomy of available access resources in England and WalesRecreational Access in England and Wales 403 increased market provision in the farm sector. Other policies, considered below, also have led to a considerable increase in permissive access on farmed land. As a second policy trend, formal adoption of community participation for access provision as part of government policy, came in the early 1990s with a general shift (as with many Western governments) in state management styles from government to governance: from an executive to an enabling role (Burns et al., 1994). A number of initiatives at the county level had begun in the early 1990s, both to develop the rights of way system at the parish level (PA Cambridge Economic Consultants, 1995) and for communities to develop their own informal access areas such as ‘pocket parks’ in areas of intensive agriculture with little amenity land. National equivalents modelled on these soon followed. The Parish Paths Part- nership was introduced in 1992 as a voluntary scheme for parish communities to maintain, develop and waymark their own rights of way with support funding from government. Greenways also were to be community-based developments integrating new forms of linear access with nature and amenity conservation under the now ubiquitous sustainable development banner. For area access, the new national community initiative has been Millennium Greens: small areas of public open space within, or close to, communities. Some 250 of these had been designated by the year 2000, proposed, developed, managed and owned by the community itself in full consultation with their number. Whatever the pros and cons of this kind of development (Curry, 2000), the policy thrust behind it may have as much to do with mobilising the community as a political rhetoric, as it has to do with the provision of access per se. The Parish Paths Partnership, for example, was cited in the 1995 Rural White Paper (Depart- ment of the Environment, 1995) as a good example of community development rather than as an example of improving the access resource. Forestry policy is a third policy strand in the area in which, quintessentially, access has been used as a principal justification for a completely separate policy objective: timber expansion. As early as the 1970s it had been recognised by the Treasury (1972) that any further expansion of the national forestry estate could be justified either in financial or economic terms only if the benefits of recreation were taken fully into account and systematically exploited. A process of opening up state forests from this time ensued, with a general presumption in favour of access except where conservation, operational or safety requirements dictated otherwise. Such open access has been comparable in woodlands owned by the voluntary sector but had been less successful on private woodland where fewer than 15% of such areas are generally open to the public (Scott, 1997). In response to a need to increase private provision, a variety of grant schemes has been introduced. The Woodland Grant Scheme and the Farm Woodland Scheme between 1988 and 1998 are estimated to have brought a further 165,000 hectares into public access use in England and Wales (Department of the Envi- ronment, Transport and the Regions and the Welsh Office, 1998), although, as with all public grant schemes for access, there is much debate about how much of this land was available informally for access before the schemes were taken up. In combining two significant policy purposes, community participation has also been one of the planks upon which access development in the forestry sector
404 Journal of Sustainable Tourism has been pursued. By the mid-1990s, a new National Forest had been introduced in the Midlands of England and 12 Community Forests had been established on the outskirts of major towns and cities. Many had been actively developed and managed by community groups with access as only one of their multiple func- tions (Cloke et al., 1996). The biggest policy shift for access is also the most recent. In England and Wales, the general public is to be allowed access to all ‘open’ countryside (moun- tain, moorland, downland and heathland) and all registered common land, under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act, 2000 (Department of the Environ- ment, Transport and the Regions and the Welsh Office, 1999). In Scotland, this right of access on the part of the general public is to be extended to all land under the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, 2001 (Scottish Executive, 2001). Clearly, this access to some 10% of England and Wales is to be procured for the general public through law, rather than through agreement. It represents a fundamental shift in land rights, itself underpinned by a particular philosophical stance in relation to both land ownership and the rights of exclusion from that land. In this context, the Labour Government responsible for the Act clearly feels that it is justifiable to remove the right to exclude the general pubic for access purposes, without compensation, from those who own land that forms open country. Such a position would seem to be at variance with the neo-liberal and Kantian traditions of land rights, in which private land ownership is considered legitimate where such land can be fully husbanded by the labours of the owner and through social consensus (Hutchings, 1996). Such a Kantian view would therefore consider the right to be able to exclude (or not) by size of holding, rather than land type. Such a removal of rights is in direct contrast to economic laissez faire thinking and the Lockian tradition which hold that every man has a natural right to possessions and property (Marshall, 1994; Simmons, 1992). Some (Shoard, 1999) have suggested that access to only some land (such as open country and common land in England and Wales) is consistent with none of these traditions: either people can be excluded from land by dint of private ownership or they cannot. To exclude people from only some land (land that is not open country or common land) unfairly discriminates against landowners who happen to own the land from which rights of exclusion have been removed in law. It is far more logical (Shoard, 1999) to extend public rights to all land, as is proposed for Scotland. But irrespective of the historically deterministic view that is taken over such rights, their introduction is somewhat at variance with the general emergence of a more communitarian-based politics evident in England and Wales from the 1990s (Giddens, 1998). The policy seems to run very much against more recent styles of negotiation and consensus building in the countryside (Selman, 1998), themselves developed at the behest of government. It also appears at variance with the range of community participation initiatives considered above, them- selves endorsed for access in two recent Rural White Papers (Department of the Environment, 1995, Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, 2000). The threatened imposition of this policy shift, in some ways ironically, also led to considerable increases in permissive access on the part of the landowner more generally. The debates about access to open country in England and Wales,
Recreational Access in England and Wales 405
hinged on whether this should be a legislative measure or whether it could be
achieved through voluntary agreement with landowners. In anticipation of
negotiating this position many farmers were keen to portray their land as already
having extensive access arrangements associated with it (Curry, 1998a).
Growth in provision: some partial national accounts
In the context of these policies, the available access resource has grown consid-
erably during the 1990s. Research conducted for the Country Landowners’
Association (Curry, 1998a) has attempted to provide estimates of the net change
in publicly available access (both for area and linear access) between 1990 and
1997 for England and Wales only. Whilst this invariably is not exhaustive
(changes in water company and Ministry of Defence provision for example, are
not able to be determined) it is comprehensive of all the agri-environment
scheme access provision, local authority and other access agreements and
permissive access on farmland without any formal agreement at all. This latter
category invariably is access with only the permission or knowledge of the land-
owner and may well have grown as a covert result of both agri-environment and
open country policy. The estimates1 of the net new growth in access supply are
presented in Table 1. These estimates do not include the increase in area available
for access (to open country and common land) under the Countryside and Rights
of Way Act, 2000 (the CROW Act, 2000), some 1.8 million hectares in all in
England and Wales (Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions
and the Welsh Office, 1999). Also since 1997, Millennium Greens have been intro-
duced as one of the principal elements of community participation policy, with
an estimated areal extent in the region of 1000 hectares (Curry, 2000).
Table 1 Estimates of net new growth in access supply between 1990 and 1997 for
England and Wales only
Type of access Net new access
Area (ha) Linear (km)
Countryside Stewardship 10,519 687
Tir Cymen 25,935 41
ESA Access 42 –
Countryside Access Scheme 1,195 –
WGS/FWPS 24,202
Community Woodland Supplement 3,288
Inland Revenue agreements ? 210
Other written agreements 82,932 1,978
Access with no formal agreement 314,852 17,492
Total 463,965 20,408
Source: derived from the Country Landowners’ Association survey (Curry, 1998a) with
additions from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (1999)406 Journal of Sustainable Tourism
As can be seen in Table 1, there has been a net growth in access opportunities as
a whole in England and Wales since 1990 of at least 450,000 hectares of land and
some 20,000 kilometres of linear access. Overall, this study estimated that access
opportunities in England and Wales may have grown somewhere in the region
of 20% between 1990 and 1997. When access to open country and common land
becomes fully available (estimated to be by about 2005), the net increase in avail-
able access opportunities in England and Wales will have grown by well over
100% since 1990.
The Consumption of Access to the Countryside
Levels of consumption
To what extent is such provision matched by the demands of the population as
witnessed through consumption patterns for access to the countryside? From the
first nationally collected data in 1977, a number of authors have asserted that
access consumption has grown (Clark et al., 1994; Shoard, 1999) and others that it
has exhibited a general structural decline (Patmore, 1986). By the mid-1990s, the
House of Commons Environment Committee (1995) concluded for the 1980s:
We noted with some surprise that there was little conclusive evidence that
the number of visitors had increased significantly in recent years. In partic-
ular, the National Survey of Countryside Recreation, which looked at the
period 1984–91, showed that the overall number of visits made to the coun-
tryside had remained constant year on year. The Countryside Commission
stated that ‘the number of visitors to the countryside has grown relatively
little since 1977’. This runs counter to the popular perception of leisure
trends in that period and, seemingly, that had happened before that date.
The reason for this lack of growth or even structural decline in participation
during the 1980s, contend Patmore (1986) and Roberts (1999) is not due to any
inherent declining interest in the countryside, but rather, a shift in leisure life-
styles towards more home-centred leisure activity. This has been triggered by
increasing home ownership (and an increase in DIY) and the increasing popu-
larity of home-centred consumer goods such as CDs, video and computers.
Data for the 1990s, too, are indeterminate in terms of overall numbers of people
using the countryside for outdoor recreation. The total number of visits rose by
nearly 15% between 1994 and 1996 but fell back by 4.5% between 1996 and 1998
(Social and Community Planning Research, 1997, 1999). Broadly, overall
consumption patterns for outdoor recreation appear to be static in a structural
sense and there is no evidence of a longer-term trend either upwards or down-
wards (Whitby & Falconer, 1998). Annual fluctuations are more likely to be
attributable to differing weather conditions year on year than any particular shift
in socio-economic parameters that might be held to influence consumption.
Production–consumption relationships
In aggregate terms, then, there is some evidence to suggest for England and
Wales that the supply of resources for access is outstripping their aggregate
consumption. The extent to which this represents an inefficient use of resources
hinges on being able to identify the costs of additional access provision in the faceRecreational Access in England and Wales 407
of static aggregate consumption. Clearly this is impossible in any exhaustive
sense since it would require full data availability of the marginal costs of
increased provision over time across the wide range of initiatives that is being
developed.
As with the growth in the extent of provision, however, some partial estimates
have been developed for the additional (Exchequer) costs of net new provision,
presented in Table 2. These estimates suggest an Exchequer cost of £292 per kilo-
metre of linear route and £142 per hectare of area access, in terms of the net
increases depicted in Table 1, during the period (Curry, 1998a).
Unfortunately, no other time series cost data are available for these national
increases in access provision during this period. Other total costs for the provi-
sion within this table, however, have been estimated for different time periods
In respect of Inland Revenue Agreements, the National Audit Office (1999) has
estimated these, for heritage properties, to be £239.4 million between 1984 and
1998 in the form of tax revenues forgone. There is no way of breaking this down
for the 1990s only and certainly only an element of this tax forgone can be attrib-
uted specifically to increases in the provision of access resources, since it is an
estimated cost for land of ‘outstanding scenic, historic or scientific interest’
generally. Tax forgone in this respect, however, is just short of £16 million a year,
on average during this period (National Audit Office, 1999).
Whilst the total cost of ‘other written agreements’ from Table 1 also is
unknown for this period, Whitby and Falconer (1998) have suggested that for
written agreements under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act
1949 in the Peak District only their annual cost to the local authority is likely to be
in the region of £430,000 a year or £19.24 per hectare at 1997 prices. In Lancashire
these estimates are £106,000 a year or £16.91 per hectare at 1997 prices. Ranger
Table 2 Estimates of public Exchequer cost of the growth in access supply between
1990 and 1997 for England and Wales only
Type of access Net new access
Area (£) Linear (£)
Countryside Stewardship 646,419 127,237
Tir Cymen 36,000
ESA Access 26,000
Countryside Access Scheme 63,000
WGS/FWPS c £8 million
Community Woodland Supplement unknown
Inland Revenue agreements unknown unknown
Other written agreements unknown
Access with no formal agreement 0
Total c £8.75 million c £163,000
Source: Curry (1998a)408 Journal of Sustainable Tourism costs account for two thirds of this, with less than 30% being the payment cost of the agreement to landowners. If the mean of these hectarage figures is taken as a surrogate for the average cost of all ‘other written agreements’ in figure 2, then the state (mainly local authority) cost of these agreements between 1990 and 1997 would be £1.5 million. The total cost to the state of the introduction of Millennium Greens between 1998 and 2000 has been £10 million, with a further £10 million coming from Millennium Commission Lottery funding (Curry, 2000). The local authority costs of setting up and administering access to open country and registered common land under the 2000 CROW Act have been estimated by Hickey and Curry (1998). They suggest an initial one-off start-up cost of £10 to £12 million, costs of between £9 and £11 million a year in the first two to four years, and an annual cost in the region of £6 to £6.5 million at 1997 prices from then on. They suggest that such costs might lead to a reduction in available funding for the existing rights of way system. Whilst these data remain partial and estimated, in the absence of any more satisfactory information they might suggest that the state cost of introducing a range of net new access provisions between 1990 and 1997 could have been in excess of £50 million. Millennium Greens since that time have incurred an addi- tional estimated cost of £10 million and in the short term the introduction of access to open country and common land also could have a state cost in the order of £10 million a year. But such new access arrangements also incur costs to the landowner. Russell (1998), for example, has explored the likely costs to landowners of extending ‘open access’ to mountain, moor and common land (but not heath and downland) under what was, at the time, the proposed open country legislation. He estimated that annual costs of allowing such access might range between £16 and £36 per hectare to the landowner, depending on the activities on the land and the assumptions made. This would suggest a total annual cost of public access over mountain, moorland and common land to the landowner of between £21 and £88 million a year at 1997 prices. Estimates of the reduction in land values as a result of this open access were considered by him to be between £826 million and £3.5 billion. These reductions in land values would result largely from a loss of ‘exclusion rights’ running with the land, rather than any actual levels of use. It would appear then, that all of these additional costs, to both the state and the landowner as a result of net increases in the access resource, have not, and are unlikely to, stimulate further aggregate consumption. The extent to which such expenditure is a wise or efficient use of resources must therefore be questioned. In cost–benefit terms too, gross social benefits from new provision are likely to be small if aggregate consumption does not increase as a result. The provision of additional access is likely to have opportunity costs associated with it either in respect of fewer resources being available for the Statutory Rights of Way System (Hickey & Curry, 1998) or more generally, that the public funds deployed in the development of additional access are not available for use on other forms of public expenditure. In this context, the net social benefits associated with the additional access resource developed are likely to be negative (Curry, 1998b).
Recreational Access in England and Wales 409 The social structure of participation An examination of the relationship between production and consumption for access might, therefore, suggest that supply-led public policy may lead to certain inefficiencies in resource allocation. There is evidence to suggest, however, that it also might be inequitable. This assertion hinges on an understanding of the nature of the social structure of participation. From the earliest National Surveys of Countryside Recreation evidence has consistently shown, whether measured by income or social grade, that the more affluent higher occupational groups are consistently the dominant users of the countryside for access purposes (Curry, 1994). The 1996 and 1998 UK Day Visits Surveys reaffirm this (Social and Community Planning Research 1997, 1999). In both of these years, the top two social grades, A and B, participated in all types of countryside recreation in greater proportion than they were represented in the population as a whole. In both years too, the bottom three social grades, C2, D and E, participated in all types of countryside recreation in less proportion that they are represented in the population as a whole. A key question in relation to this distribution is whether this unequal represen- tation of different groups in participation is as a result of some sort of material deprivation on the one hand or is more widely as the result of preference on the other. It is beyond the scope of this paper to look at this issue in any detail, but the body of research (Curry, 1994) does suggest that preference does have a signifi- cant role to play in determining participation (different leisure preferences can be observed in different social groups) and, therefore, policies that attempt to alleviate deprivation factors as a means of securing a more even structure of participation by social group are likely to be less than successful. This observation on social structure does tend to support the notion that further public expenditure on access provision is likely to be socially regressive: it will benefit the better off to a greater degree than the less well off. This notion of inequitable public expenditure does not, of course, mean that there should be no public provision of access resources. The leisure studies literature in Britain has long debated the importance of welfarist approaches to such provision (see for example, Coalter, 1998) and economists have stressed the merit good and non-excludability characteristics of outdoor recreation as a public good (Curry, 1994). Such inequity, however, does raise questions about the appropriateness of additional public expenditure in this area and, importantly, how funding should be appropriately raised for such provision. Challenges for Management and Carrying Capacity Notions of carrying capacity in Britain In the context of this apparent imbalance between the production and consumption of access goods, recreational carrying capacity has fallen some- what out of favour as a tool for recreation management in England and Wales. It had its heyday when recreation consumption was growing during the 1970s (relative, it was perceived, to the available resource) and a series of impact studies was undertaken in relation to the visual, aesthetic, wildlife and ecological effects of participation.
410 Journal of Sustainable Tourism
Notions of carrying capacity were well understood. Physical carrying capacity,
however, was criticised because of itself it said little about recreational impact
(Glyptis, 1991). Economic carrying capacity studies were rarely undertaken and
perceptual or social carrying capacity was felt to be largely self-regulating since
when enjoyment was impaired by crowding, people either left, or ceased to go to
the site (Glyptis, 1991). Ecological carrying capacity, however, excited a consider-
able degree of interest, being founded on determining maximum levels of use,
prior to unacceptable or irreversible damage. Here, however, the definition of
unacceptable was considered entirely subjective and irreversibility was difficult
to establish until it already had taken place (Goldsmith, 1987).
From the 1980s, therefore, investigations into carrying capacity have not been
common. A recognition, by some at least, that the ‘fear of a recreation explosion’
ethos of the 1970s had never actually come to pass, led to a broad conclusion that,
except in a notorious and small number of celebrated cases, recreation damage
was not really a widespread problem in England and Wales (Sidaway, 1990).
It would seem that in the context of the production–consumption imbalance in
England and Wales in relation to access, carrying capacity can be controlled,
most potently perhaps, through a shift in public agency (and indeed private indi-
vidual) orientation away from supply-led policies to those more squarely
concerned with demand management.
Inherently, controlling carrying capacity would not seem to be an insurmount-
able challenge because provision in England and Wales is significantly
outstripping consumption. Pressures on access land, except at a small number of
specific sites, are likely to ease rather than increase. In this context, two
approaches to demand management merit consideration in the English and
Welsh context, one relating to public, and the other to private, provision.
Public awareness of the access resource
It could be argued that the access resource exists at four different levels. These
are offered in Figure 2.
The resource This is the total amount of land that exists in a number
of different access categories.
The available resource This is that subset of the resource that is available for
consumption whether in a statutory, de facto or market
sense. This availability does not necessarily mean that it
is consumed.
The known about resource This is that subset of the available resource that is
known about by consumers and therefore potentially
consumable by them. Knowledge of its existence does
not necessarily mean that it is consumed.
The used resource This is that subset of the known about resource that is
actually consumed.
Figure 2 A typology of access resourcesRecreational Access in England and Wales 411 Only the last two of these can be exploited by the consumer or recreationist, and increasing the available resource per se (the predisposition with supply-based policies) will have no impact upon consumption unless that resource is known about. Management will, therefore, be most effective if it focuses on increasing knowledge and awareness rather than the available resource. This importance of knowledge and awareness being the key to exploiting resources has been stressed by a number of authors (Curry, 1994; Emmet, 1971; Whitby, 1997). The Centre for Leisure Research (1986) further suggests that resources must not just be known about, but must be usable with confidence and certainty. Apprehensions and ambiguities about the rights of access diminish both enjoyment and use. These apprehensions are greatest in areas of non-market provision, where the ability to assert access rights is not always clear. Knowledge management, therefore, has a particularly potent role to play in the provision and control of such non-market goods. These are most commonly associated with statutorypublic rights and government incentive and agreement schemes. Uncertainty about access provision has been noted in relation to a number of government access policies discussed above. The National Audit Office (1999) notes this as a significant problem in relation to Capital Transfer Tax exempted land and it was referred to in one of the recommendations of the Agriculture Committee (1997) report on Regulation 2078/92. This is the Regulation that introduced the access provisions within a variety of agri-environment schemes. By 1997 these schemes were being criticised because of the low awareness on the part of the public of where these new access areas were (Raley et al., 1998). The Committee proposed that the names of farmers making contracts with Govern- ment under the Regulation should be made public, a suggestion accepted by Government in its response to the report. The role of markets The public provision of access (requiring knowledge management) is commonly justified on the grounds of non-excludability: it is impossible to keep people out of certain areas because they cannot be ‘fenced off’ to create an excludable good. Under these circumstances, ‘pay at the gate’ or other similar facilities cannot be developed. Whilst this is true in many areas where public provision prevails, innovative ways of securing market revenues from access are growing considerably in England and Wales. Such innovations are taking place squarely in the context of post Millennium public policy for countryside recreation. Despite its historical preoccupation with supply-led provision, such policy recently has undergone a noticeable shift in ethos. The introduction of a series of Integrated Access Demonstration Projects by the Countryside Agency has seen a commitment to all new provision being measured against the identifiable demands and needs of recreationists (Country- side Agency, 2000a) and the Countryside and Rights of Way Act, 2000 is to ‘modernise’ the rights of way system explicitly with reference to people’s needs (Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions and the Welsh Office, 1999). In the context of these, a series of county level demand studies has been commissioned by the Countryside Agency (e.g. Countryside Agency,
412 Journal of Sustainable Tourism 2000c) to determine more exactly the nature of the outdoor recreation ‘market’ at the local level. Perhaps the most overt public policy commitment to the development of markets for rural leisure has come with a series of policy statements on rural tourism. The Countryside Agency, working with the English Tourism Council (2001) has developed a rural tourism strategy that is firmly market based. Here, the Agency claims that rural tourism should be based on market opportunities with improved marketing. Such market-based policies also are simultaneously acknowledging other contemporary policy strands such as local community participation and sustainable development. To maximise economic potential, for example through the multiplier effect, rural tourism should add value locally through local products and services and should promote quality, attractiveness and sustainability. It should be based, claims the Agency, on strategies that are locally developed and interpreted to best serve local markets and local econo- mies. The English Tourism Council’s (2001) own sustainable tourism strategy too, stresses the importance to the economy of local labour, local business involvement and the development of local distinctiveness. In using markets to develop countryside recreation and tourism in this way, the main growth areas in terms of both income and employment have been perceived to be accommodation, retailing and specific tourist facilities and attractions (Geoff Broom Associates, 1998) rather than the wider more ‘natural’ countryside. In respect of specific tourist attractions,a number of innovations are taking place to capture revenues. A significant number of bilateral arrangements have developed between landowners and individual groups (for paint balling, battle recreation and model aircraft flying, for example) through time period licences or annual memberships. Some ‘voluntary’organisations such as the National Trust (with a membership of well over 1 million) have systems of both annual memberships and entry fees to their buildings (although access to their land remains free). Tolls have been introduced for certain forms of linear access (particularly on horseback) for popular stretches of bridleway. Even a number of state-owned sites (for example those of the Forestry Commission) have intro- duced charges, at least for car parking. Perhaps most importantly, there has been a considerable growth in the commercialisation of access activities by the provision of specific events to capture revenues. Even at a localised level, cultural heritage has been exploited to create themes for museums, sites of historic interest, food and retail outlets. New forms of sport such as BMX biking, rollerblading and skateboarding have spawned provision of appropriate sites for their enjoyment. There also has been a significant growth in agriculture-related activities such as farm parks and walks, horse riding and fruit (and other produce) picking as well as more traditional sporting activities (Curry, 1994). But despite these more overt considerations of market demands and revenue capture, the data suggest that even for rural tourism, participation patterns certainly do not exhibit growth. Whilst overall tourist spending increased by 2.4% between 1994 and 1998 to £22,079 million, spending in the English country- side fell by 3% during the same period to £2,768 million (Geoff Broom Associates, 1998; Office of National Statistics, 1998; Social and Community Planning Research, 1995, 1999). This countryside expenditure fell by as much as 20% in
Recreational Access in England and Wales 413 some of the English regions (Countryside Agency, 2000b). In employment terms, too, the 290,000 direct and 33,500 indirect jobs associated with rural tourism in England and Wales in 1988 had fallen by 4% and 8% respectively since 1994, with the biggest losses being in accommodation and catering (Geoff Broom Associ- ates, 1998). An exploration of markets, however, can assist in identifying particular market segments that do offer income and employment potential. In contrast to domestic rural tourism, for example, spending by overseas visitors on country- side holidays in England increased by 37% from £509 million in 1994 to £699 million 1998 (Geoff Broom Associates, 1998), and by 1999 the total number of overseas visitors to England as a whole had exceeded 21million (English Tourism Council, 2001). An increased market orientation for access, outdoor recreation and rural tourism can thus have advantages in respect of both issues of practical manage- ment and issues of principle. In terms of management, markets provide rationing to allow the quality of the resource to be sustained. Price adjustments can control the number of visitors to ensure that all kinds of carrying capacity (from ecolog- ical to perceptual) are not exceeded. Differential pricing also can be used to ‘even out’ the number of visitors over the week or the year. Markets also provide revenue (to fund management tasks), control and market information (about people’s preferences) and allow the development of market image. Markets also provide much needed economic activity for the rural economy, through rural tourism, as it seeks to move away from a single sector dependence on agriculture. Shoard (1999) also reports that for the consumer, markets provide a sense of safety and security and clarify insurance liability cover. This is particu- larly important when many other forms of access in Britain do not enjoy the confidence of the consumer in terms of either their knowledge, or the certainty of legitimate access. More fundamentally, however, markets, where they are feasible in terms of excludability and for access where transactions costs are relatively low, can do much to redress the efficiency and equity imbalances of supply-led public policy. The social structure of participation suggests that it is market demands rather than social needs that provide the principal triggers to participation. Because of this, equity imbalances in public policy offer some potential to be ameliorated through market provision. Indeed, there is some evidence to suggest that markets can make provision more egalitarian (Curry, 1994). This is because pref- erences are often a stronger influence over participation than price (Curry & Ravenscroft, 2000) and providing people with what they want, even at a price, can shift participation towards the less affluent. Free ‘solitude’ activities tend to be consumed more than proportionately by the more affluent than ‘events’ such as village fetes, agricultural shows and exhibitions. These invariably are charged for (not least because they have more significant costs associated with them) and yet attract a wider social spectrum of the population. Markets also can ameliorate potential inefficiencies in the provision of access resources through state supply-led policies. Excess provision tends to be less likely since if there is no demand for a product it will cease to be supplied. In short, markets allow those who have an effective demand to pay, and taxpayers who do not have an effective demand will not have to subsidise provision. If
414 Journal of Sustainable Tourism there is a demand, providers can exploit it fully. If there is not, there can be little justification for further state support in this area. Certainly markets for access and outdoor recreation are not a panacea, but within pluralist provision, their advantages must not be overlooked. Conclusions In England and Wales a range of supply-led policies has led to a considerable increase in access provision during the 1990s, induced either directly by policy or brought about by private landowners in the context of policy, through incentives or coercion. A static or declining aggregate consumption of access in England and Wales over the past 20 years has meant at best that there is less visitor pres- sure per unit of access land available than at any time since the war. At worst, many elements of provision may remain significantly underused. In this context, carrying capacities are less of a critical issue for recreation management, certainly relative to the 1960s and 1970s except at certain indi- vidual pressured sites. Where visitor pressure is perceived, however, demand management policies have the potential to control environmental and other forms of impact. In the context of pluralistic provision, the management of access knowledge is a potent vehicle in respect of non-market provision, for controlling visitor numbers. Market provision where it is appropriate, however, not only introduces powerful mechanisms at the site level, but also can assist in making aggregate provision both more efficient and more equitable. Correspondence Any correspondence should be directed to Professor Nigel Curry, Country- side and Community Research Unit, Faculty of Environment and Leisure, Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education, Francis Close Hall, Swindon Road, Cheltenham, Glos. GL50 4AZ, UK (ncurry@chelt.ac.uk). Notes 1. In statistical terms the figures for access through ‘other written agreements’ and ‘access with not formal agreement’ are accurate with 95% confidence and a sampling error of ± 4%. All other data are from official government sources. References Agriculture Committee of the House of Commons (1997) Environmentally Sensitive Areas and other Schemes under the Agri-environment Regulation, Volumes I and II. London: House of Commons. Burns, D., Hambleton, R. and Hoggart, P. (1994) The Politics of Decentralisation: Revitalising Local Democracy. London: Macmillan. Centre for Leisure Research (1986) Access to the Countryside for Recreation and Sport (CCP 217). Cheltenham and London: Countryside Commission and Sports Council. Clark, G., Darrell, J., Grove-White, R., MacNaghten, P. and Urry, J. (1994) Leisure Land- scapes: Leisure, Culture and the English Countryside, Changes and Conflicts. London: Council for the Protection of Rural England Cloke, P., Milbourne, P. and Thomas, C. (1996) The English national forest: Local reactions to plans for renegotiated nature–society relations in the countryside. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 21, 552–71. Coalter, F. (1998) Leisure studies, leisure policy and social citizenship: The failure of welfare or the limits of welfare? Leisure Studies 17, 21–36.
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