I appreciate that most of you originally joined the Ramblers to participate in our led walks. However, in any year only a minority of you actually go on a led walk and perhaps the others remain members because they appreciate all the work we do to protect and improve the footpath network and promote walking. Certainly this and the campaigning done nationally are what distinguish Ramblers' Groups from other walking clubs.
The public rights of way work we do in Kent is all done by volunteers. With over 4500 miles of rights of way we need a lot of volunteers and there are never enough people coming forward to help.
With overall responsibility for footpath work is the Public Rights of Way Manager. It's a grand sounding title but, remember, this is just a volunteer role. Unfortunately this post is currently vacant so Colin Sefton, Tony Bristow and I are covering the work as best we can in addition to all the other things we do, hoping that eventually someone will take pity on us and step up to help.
Probably the key role of the PRoW Manager is to improve communication with all the other PRoW volunteers. This year we have started producing a newsletter for all footpath volunteers and there have been three issues so far. Such feedback as we have received has been very positive but we have only heard from a tiny proportion of potential readers, perhaps only 10%.
Also important to our communication strategy are our meetings for footpath volunteers. We held two of these in Lenham in 2023 and hope to hold two in 2024, in April and either October or November. All feedback from those who attended has been very encouraging but only 41 attended the most recent meeting. What about the other 160 volunteers?
The PRoW Manager is supported by four Sector Coordinators, two for West Kent and two for East Kent. Unfortunately Maura resigned in January, leaving Tony Bristow and Roger King to hold the fort until successors can be found.
The real work of scrutinising planning applications and proposals to divert or extinguish paths is done by our Local Footpaths Officers ("LFOs"). Elsewhere in this Review we celebrate Dave Wetton's long service in this role, describe one of his recent cases and appeal for others to step into his shoes now that failing eyesight prevents him from continuing. We can use more LFOs right across Kent -- there is a vacancy map on the website.
Public Hearing on Sevington Inland Border Facility
Our most recent public hearing was held on 24 January 2023 and related to the extinguishment of a footpath that had been temporarily closed when the Sevington Inland Border Facility was built across it. We would have preferred a further temporary closure as the IBF itself was supposedly only temporary. Our recently appointed LFO, Paddy Herlihy, argued our case passionately but the Inspector decided against us.
LFO work can be largely desk-based with occasional site visits when required for specific cases. For regular walking of all our footpaths we have our Parish Footpath Wardens (PFOs). While the optimum patch size for an LFO is more than ten parishes (and some have as many as 40), a PFO should walk all the paths on their patch once a year and most have only one or two parishes to care for.
With over 200 footpath volunteers, routing the large volume of correspondence that comes our way is quite a task in itself. We are lucky that our PRoW Administration Officer, Glynis Clifton, handles it all so well.
Lastly we have our footpath maintenance teams who mainly undertake vegetation clearance but in some cases install stiles and gates.
If all our volunteer posts were filled, each would be easily manageable -- many hands do indeed make light work. But they are not and some of us are overloaded. Please do consider whether you or someone you know might be able to join our jolly team and help to spread the load a little. Please get in touch at prow@kentramblers.org.uk.