When I was on a LAF I remember a talk by an area health officer, this was a detailed lecture on the declining physical and mental health of the national population and how those of us with a position to assist in the provision of access to the countryside, were in the frontline. Often wonder how many others on that forum remember that.
Land is an asset, basic principle in economics or so I seem to remember, but few split off that part of land that is countryside from the actual substance of land. It is countryside, which everyone needs in many different ways, though we all do not need land to feed ourselves nowadays. Not like the times of enclosures or when landowners wished to export corn at the expense of a starving nation.
Is the inability of a class, who occupy large areas of land, to recognise this need a social irresponsibility? Thus the modern equivalent of the Corn Laws.
Gunwharfman's OP example may show the Cornwall council official getting the wrong end of the stick, fairly common occurrence, but there is some logic in the underlying principle. Bit like the topsy turvey principles of the CLA trying to keep people out of the countryside and yet farmers are committing suicide in unprecedented numbers because of their social isolation, according to articles in the agricultural press.