Devon TRF Group Forum

The cleverly crafted wording of the iniquitous Natural England & Rural Communities Act is the reason nobody will bother with this Wacky.

This is because there was no schedule 14 application made before 2005 as we were led to believe applications could be made up until the parish review came around and the law was iniquitously back dated, because there is no S.67 exemption as the way is not on the list of streets, because there is no evidence the way was expressly made for the use of motor vehicles, no pre 1930 vehicular user evidence, and because given these facts it would be a waste of time effort and energy as the best we could hope for under the current legislation is another Restricted Byway which would extinguish vehicular rights over the way denying it to us forever.

If I had a bottomless pit of money and unlimited time I would make objections to each and every such application forcing public inquiries on principle to clog up the system and render it unworkable, but I don't, and nor does the TRF.

I do not condone law breaking but recognise that bad law is unenforceable and I think it is likely that this legislation once passed will be widely ignored and anti vehicle devices and signs will be quietly removed and people will continue to use the way as they always did before. The police will not be interested as they lack the resources to enforce vehicular use of restricted byways and the only forseeable problem is busy bodies laying in wait to take registration numbers but I think they will get bored and give up as the levels of traffic have always been historically low anyway and I don't think I have never met a pedestrian on the way in the past.