Derbyshire Area News - Derby and South Derbyshire Ramblers

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Derbyshire Area News—Winter 2012/13Two members attended Rambler's 2012 General Council in Leicester.The greatest achievement of the Ramblers in Derbyshire remains our Groups' excellentwalks programmes; thanks are again due to those many volunteers who organiseand lead the walks. We are also grateful for the efforts of our Footpath Secretaries,Membership Secretaries and Treasurers. However, we still have vacancies on ourArea Council and Group Committees. The more that tasks can be shared betweenCouncil and Group officers, the more we can achieve and the less risk there is of incumbentsfinding their roles too demanding. At Area Council we have been lacking aChair, Countryside Secretary and Publicity Secretary. The absence of an Area PublicityOfficer means that we do not have a point of contact for the local media and thatwe are not generating as much publicity as we should to encourage people to join theRamblers and take up recreational walking. If you may be able to consider taking onany of these roles (or my role as Secretary which could enable me to move on to anotherrole), please let me know.MEMBERSHIP SECRETARY’S REPORTChris VaughanMembership currently stands at 1420 compared to 1463 this time last year. Newmember reports are now being sent directly to Group membership Secretaries. Thefull monthly reports still only come to the Area Membership Secretary.WEBMASTERCurrently snowed under by requests from other Groups for web site hosting;ramblers-webs.org.uk currently hosts 49 domains.Would still welcome someone to take over editing the derbyshireramblers.org.uk site.FOOTPATHS SECRETARY’S REPORTOff-RoadingGeof ColeThe use of motorized recreational motor vehicles (rmvs) on unsurfaced public rights ofway (PRoW) continues to cause concern amongst residents and other users alike.On behalf of the Ramblers, I have commented on the new off-roading managementplans for both the Peak District National Park Authority (PDNPA) and DerbyshireCounty Council (DCC), arguing that both organisations should be more active in managingoff-roading. In addition, I have supported Traffic Regulation Orders to stop offroadersfrom using the most sensitive routes in the Peak District. Members can helpby commenting on the PDNPA consultation on traffic restrictions on Long Causeway(Stanage) and The Roych (near Chapel) via the PDNPA website.6
The Chesterfield and North-East Derbyshire Ramblers’ Group has approached CentralOffice to ask for a national campaign on off-roading. Central Office seem to thinkthere is little appetite for such a national campaign but have offered to help a localone. We expect a meeting to look at what could be done later this year, which is likelyto include members from all local Ramblers’ Groups.DCC Rights of Way Improvement PlanDCC are revising the Rights of Way Improvement Plan, which was first issued 5 yearsago. I am on the working group looking at how it can be improved. It is not an excitingread, but is an important document as it defines the Council’s priorities on rights ofway for the next 5 years. Anything missing is unlikely to be given funding and our aimis to correct errors and omission from the first edition.Public Rights of Way SurveyGroups continue to help DCC with their 6 monthly survey of public rights of way. TheCouncil survey 5% of its PRoWs each year. In the May survey this year, the pass rateof 71% across Derbyshire compared with the Council target of 72.5%.Open Access Land SurveyI’ve agreed to join a team from the D&DLAF who will look at the open access land inDerbyshire, outside of the Peak District. The intention is to see what could be done toimprove access, marking and public awareness. I’ll keep Sue Weatherley (our accessofficer) advised of progress - if any.DCCA recent Ramblers Central Office investigation has shown that we are fortunate inDerbyshire in that the local government funding cuts have had little impact on rights ofway so far. However, we need to keep lobbying on the benefits of walking and accessto green spaces to both individual and community health to maintain this position.DCC has appointed a Volunteer Co-ordinator – Steve Cresswell – to help volunteersto tackle work on public rights of way. He has already met with some of our GroupFootpath Secretaries and will be speaking at our next Derbyshire Public Rights of WayCommittee.And FinallyDerbyshire Area News—Winter 2012/13Keith Shiers has obtained some interesting path maintenance statistics from DCC. Acomparison of the outstanding reported problems with the length of the path networkin each District shows that the Derbyshire Dales has the lowest number of reportedproblems per kilometre whilst South Derbyshire has the highest. In the Dales you canexpect to come across a known problem every 15 km compared with 1.5 km in SouthDerbyshire. For completion Amber Valley comes out at 10.5km and Erewash at7
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Derbyshire Area News - Derby and South Derbyshire Ramblers

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