David Rose
Active member
Over at ukclimbing.com in the "rocktalk" section I have posted the following (below). It will be interesting to see what, anything, readers there say in response.
http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?n=600977
Over at ukcaving.com a debate has been raging for months over whether the CROW (Countryside and Rights of Way) Act, which provides free access to designated, open land, including many areas with crags, ought to be extended to cover caving. At the moment, the received wisdom of Natural England and Defra is that it doesn't. However, a legal opinion by my sister, the eminent public law expert Dinah Rose QC, has challenged this, saying that caving ought to be within the scope of the Act, just as climbing is. There is no public policy reason why it shouldn't be, she says, and parliament cannot have intended caving to be excepted when it passed the Act. Her opinion states the law should be re-interpreted.
Soon there is to be a referendum among members of the British Caving Association as to what its stance ought to be. On the forum, a body of opinion (which I do not at all share) suggests that a campaign to extend CROW to caving will have negative consequences, including bad relations with landowners, problems in conserving vulnerable caves with delicate formations, and the likely restriction of exploratory digging.
Are there any readers here who have noticed any bad effects when CROW first covered climbing around 2000? Does anyone see a downside in having caving covered? Was there a similar debate in climbing circles before the Act was passed in 2000? Please post here if you can contribute - and for that matter at ukcaving.com if you feel so moved.
http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?n=600977
Over at ukcaving.com a debate has been raging for months over whether the CROW (Countryside and Rights of Way) Act, which provides free access to designated, open land, including many areas with crags, ought to be extended to cover caving. At the moment, the received wisdom of Natural England and Defra is that it doesn't. However, a legal opinion by my sister, the eminent public law expert Dinah Rose QC, has challenged this, saying that caving ought to be within the scope of the Act, just as climbing is. There is no public policy reason why it shouldn't be, she says, and parliament cannot have intended caving to be excepted when it passed the Act. Her opinion states the law should be re-interpreted.
Soon there is to be a referendum among members of the British Caving Association as to what its stance ought to be. On the forum, a body of opinion (which I do not at all share) suggests that a campaign to extend CROW to caving will have negative consequences, including bad relations with landowners, problems in conserving vulnerable caves with delicate formations, and the likely restriction of exploratory digging.
Are there any readers here who have noticed any bad effects when CROW first covered climbing around 2000? Does anyone see a downside in having caving covered? Was there a similar debate in climbing circles before the Act was passed in 2000? Please post here if you can contribute - and for that matter at ukcaving.com if you feel so moved.