UK Nature and Environment

A new trail along the east coast of England should be created, a Tory thinktank has said, because farmland is preventing those who live there from having access to nature.

A report from Onward has found that in most rural areas, people enjoy extensive rights-of-way networks. But across the east of England, there are many areas where people have barely anywhere they are allowed to walk in the countryside. This, the report says, is because of large areas of high-grade farmland in that area, but also because Lincolnshire has the largest backlog for recognition of historical but unrecorded rights of way, with more than 450 outstanding applications.

According to green space metrics created by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the nature charity Wildlife and Countryside Link, half of local authorities in the worst 10% for access to nature are in eastern England. Almost nine-tenths of local authorities in the east have below-average access to green space.