I think I drew attention to this following an article in the British Farmer last March.
Learning from pilot schemes for farmers to provide permissive paths as an alternative – with the legal right of way still available – when livestock are being grazed on the land.
An obvious strategy that should have been a voluntary safety measure at least 20 years ago. But it should be linked to an understanding that the Access Network is an important social and economic structure/national asset, not to be tampered with by a socially biased minority with an agenda to restrict access. Since the 2000 CRoW Act the CLA has pursued a policy that additional access should be paid for and when the public funding for permissive ways ceased, it has resulted in an anti-access attitude, which they have made no attempt to redress.
Certainly leaving it to individual farmers is a recipe for disaster.
Do not make a mistake of identity.
If you add to this the publicity given to safeguarding against rights of way by Sarah Slade for the CLA, the government are having to pick up the pieces of a mess that CLA and NFU have created for themselves. Primarily because the CLA realized they needed a grass routes membership and the NFU did not develop a separate strategy on access for fear of losing membership subscriptions.
Temporary detours should not be the subject of RoW laws, but obvious H&S strategies, more alternative routes to aid livestock management that improve the countryside access should be a natural 'Quid Pro Quo' and seen as development of the access network, which benefits the farmer in public relations development and good product advertising, which producers in any other field pay dearly for.