In a very, very small way I have seen a pretty shoddy example of manipulation of 'position' by a land owner, which on such a small scale indicates how widespread the corruption on the bigger scale can come about.
Having told the story of Gordon Miller, agent for Lady Berwick and his legacy, as local authority officer, which has cut off a county town from much of it's surrounding countryside, I won't jump strait in and repeat it. It is interesting as one pokes around in the manure heap of local politics, the whiffs of corruption that suddenly erupt.
Perhaps 10 years ago, maybe more, I was walking in Devon, near Aveton Gifford, Mrs BWW and I were enjoying a particularly attractive valley, typical to the local terrain, when we came to a property, straddling the valley on our side of that valley. It was clearly an old converted mill, that once would have drawn it's power from the river and the mill's customers would use the ways to it over many centuries. This is an example where a property owner, who is fortunate enough to secure a home in a beautiful part of our countryside needs to balance their wish for privacy with the common interest.
There are many locations throughout the country where such anomalies exist and it is very difficult to get a Right of Way diverted in such a case. What surprised me was a massive 'Privacy Zig Zag', that yanked this historic way up through 4 maybe 6 contours lines to a field margin well above the level of the roof of the property, a few yards along a field margin the down the other side of it. Making an attractive and gentle stroll into a feat of hill climbing. To make this even worse, a simple addition of a bit of field margin would have added another feature to this diversion. This did not bother Mrs BWW and I at the time but might challenge me over a decade later with a heart attack in the bag. (Fortunately the stent is keeping me active).
If I could locate that property I would have provided a map ref. seems to escape me for the moment, but as the years have rolled by I have been able flesh out this example. Reading CLA publications I learnt that that landowner's lobby group had replaced a long standing professional adviser on access matters. I had read a few articles of his, and a phrase that sticks in my mind is, in order reach an understanding with users of the access network landowners might have to, "Give away more than they take." My guess is that this individual was trained and worked as a Land Agent.
The above phrase popped up in one of Harry Cotterell's articles the year he was Vice President of the CLA, but by the time he became President, the tone had changed, 'giving anything away' had disappeared, as he struggled with his 'Common Sense Approach' to access. The position of access adviser had been taken by lawyer, Sarah Slade, a profession probably not so familiar with history of access. I think the land agent was more familiar with the reasons behind the corruption of the definitive map and a lawyer is of a profession that works at dissembling the truth.
At the time I was on Shropshire's LAF and during a meeting I was sitting next to one of the equestrian delegates, who had worked on the Stepping Forward Initiative, as a landowner expounded a particularly selfish bit of logic, I muttered under my breath, "Straight from the Gospel of Sarah Slade". To which I got a nudge and this comment, "I know her, been on committee with, she is rabid anti access". We later agreed that she fitted the part of Cruella DaVille of the countryside, instead of stealing puppies, she manipulates the privileged to steal the countryside from ordinary folk.
Since that exchange I have stumbled across references to this lawyer, pinpointed her location, which is Devon, where she was on that counties LAF and would not be surprised on other bodies, where she can further the cause of landowner interests, but that is probably enough to explain such great privacy zig zag and has given some sense to it.
It was this chain of events that led me suspect that the CLA are well aware of the corruption of the definitive map and has led me to think that there is an active policy to take over the chairs of LAF's pre 2026, so as to ensure covering up any exposure and limiting any publicity on the full extent of the damage to our access network.