Wildcamp E-Petition - Government Response
John Hee
23 June 2008/We received a petition asking:
“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to legalise wild camping in England and Wales.”
Details of Petition:
“Currently without the landowners concent it is illegal to wild camp on the moors, mountains, National Parks and MOD land. It is time to give people the same rights as those given North of the Border in Scotland to allow them to wild camp in these places without threat of legal action.”
The Government’s response
This Government appreciates the potential benefits of wild camping in England and its attractiveness to campers who already have the opportunity to camp in the wild in Scotland.
The Land Reform Act in Scotland allows for wild camping, but the land issues and the legislation in England are somewhat different. The introduction of wild camping in England would be a controversial issue, which would require both significant consultation and legislative change.
On open access land wild camping is prohibited under Schedule 2 of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, which lists all restricted activities. Therefore, new Regulations would be required to exclude wild camping as a restricted activity. Any change to the current rules on wild camping in National Parks and Ministry of Defence land would require new primary legislation.
The Government has no plans to allocate the necessary resources to consider proposals for such legislation at present, and is concentrating on following up the successful introduction of 750,000 hectares of open access land with new legislation on access to the coast in the Marine Bill, which is currently going through Parliament.
Link here
Posted on: Monday, June 23, 2008 at 10:06 am
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John,
In a sense this is the only response that anyone could have expected. It carries no value judgement with it other than the current focus on the marine bill. This seems fair enough to me. In reality the petition will have caught the notice and imagination of some important campaigners, most notably the Ramblers Association. The RA have now succeeded in their coastal access campaign.
A real campaign should start now. And we should be talking to the Ramblers. Drop me an email.
Andy.
June 24th, 2008 at 2:02 amYes, it’s good the ball is rolling on this. But to really speed things up why not organise a mass camp and notify the press?
June 24th, 2008 at 2:04 amMass-camping goes against the ethos of wildcamping, IMO.
June 24th, 2008 at 7:18 amandy - you’ve mail
June 24th, 2008 at 10:23 amI agree, mass camping does go against the ethos of wild camping. What I’m suggesting is a protest camp to raise the profile of the current situation. Perhaps a co-ordinated wild camp in a dozen different areas by one or two tents in each area is a better idea? Either way, if covered by the press, it’ll garner a lot more support and promote debate than a crummy petition.
June 25th, 2008 at 1:34 amThere was nothing “crummy” about the petition. It took hard work, sweat, tears, time, cash, favours, pride, and lots of other resources to push it and steer it.
The coordinated wildcamp idea might be a goer.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:18 amSure, I appreciate it took a lot of effort. I was really just being cynical about the effectiveness of such petitions. Look forward to hearing about other developments though and hopefully I can be of assistance in the future.
June 26th, 2008 at 3:27 amI don’t see a sporadic outbreak of pockets of two tents each, hundreds of miles apart, garnering much press interest - you going to cycle down from Scotland and interview ‘em all Fergal!?!?! No? Can’t see the BBC committing camera crews all over the place either. As for press photographers, the message of “protest” wouldn’t really be gotten across with a pic of two tents at Whernside Tarns, now.
There’s now a serious, long-term, well-planned campaign to be fought - a slow burner I’d imagine.
By the way, I love Aktoman’s commentary (http://aktoman.blogspot.com) about the Labour Party getting fewer supporters than the wild camp petition in the recent bye-election. It’d be funny, if it didn’t just help demonstrate how out of touch and redundant this Government suddenly is.
And me a Socialist…
June 29th, 2008 at 4:38 pm