Some people have been pressing me for access to the 'instructions'. I am offering this statement to help them understand the context of what already is in the public domain with what is not.
My interest in this subject started back at the CNCC AGM when Tim made the curious statement that Natural England had declared caving on the surface was an open air recreation. I did a fair amount of research into CRoW including using legal data bases to search for meanings of words and previous cases using these words. By late May I had built up a large 13 page document detailing my thoughts, though several areas relating to consultation papers and debates were incomplete as I had not obtained copies of them then.
Around that time I then produced a document which can be seen as Appendix 1 to the CRoW Working Group report to the BCA AGM, read pages 22 to 27 in the Officers Reports at
http://british-caving.org.uk/wiki3/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=about:documents:general_meetings:agm_reports_2014.pdf which was a reduced (13 to 6 pages) version of my main work. (I did edit out a number of items, including a discussion about open air cremations for example, see
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2009/978.html if you are that intrigued. It concluded that one could design a building which was open to the air as is required by a Hindu burial belief!) I then got drawn into producing the 'instructions' and never got around to completing my May document.
I have indicated elsewhere that we are holding back on releasing the 'instructions' until we have sought legal advice. But for those who would like to have an idea of what is in the 'instructions' then it comprises of an introduction and four Parts. The introduction provides a brief history, organisation and nature of caving plus some basic statistics of the number of caves on access land. Part 1 covers early legislation from the 19 century up to the 1939 Access to the Mountains Act. Part 2 deals with the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949 and CRoW covering not only the parliamentary debates but also the precursor consultation papers and so forth. Part 3 covers a detailed consideration of CRoW focusing on the meaning of the two phrases 'access land' and 'open air recreation'. Part 4 covers material issued by Natural England and some email exchanges. The 'instructions' only asked 'Arising from this work comes the principle question of whether the right of access as provided for in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act applies to caving'.
Much of what is in the Working Group Appendix is based on my May document and is also in the 'instructions' at Parts 3 and 4. I will admit that the May document and the Annex is a bit light on the material in Part 4 of the 'instructions' on Natural England since much of that was informed by Tim's work.
So if you are that interested you can get an appreciation of that part of the 'instructions' covering the legal argument Parts 3 and 4 by reading Appendix 1 mentioned above. And apologies to those of you who have already done so.
Work on the parliamentary debates was done in a hurry and only documented as full copies of the debates and 2 documents providing the internet links for each debate. PM me with your email address if you want a copy of the links. Various quotes were used in the 'instructions'. The most significant quote from all the debates has already been quoted in discussion on this forum at
http://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=16816.msg221779#msg221779. I would recommend reading that part of the debate which covers the proposed amendment which sought to define open air recreation and the Minister's response.
I have thought about bringing up to date my May document. There are two problems. The first is whether I should up date the May document or issue it with known errors which I don't have the time to correct. The second is the May document contains very little of the results of the study of the parliamentary debates. So I conclude I am reluctant to issue it.
I know for a fact that there are individuals within BCA with differing views on this. (Ie:- pro or against.) But none on the C&A committee as far as I am aware, so hopefully we will be able to come up with a independent stance that BCA as a whole will have to accept. (I think!)
