Natural England

NCAF 11/3 Access and the Local Economy

Access and the tourism economy

2. The Agency has commissioned research by DTZ Pieda Consulting into the economic, social and environmental impacts of the FMD outbreak in the period to the end of April 2001. The final report will be published later in the year. The draft report reveals that: 

1. nationally, tourism accounts for some 4% of UK economy (agriculture accounts for 1.2%), and employs two million people;
   
2. visitors spend £12 billion per year in the English countryside, supporting some 380,000 jobs;
   
3. a third of this £12bn spend is by day visitors, who account for three quarters of all rural tourists;
   
4. 80% of accommodation providers nationally have had their business affected by the FMD outbreak, with business down by a half or more in some 14% of hotels: the worst of these impacts are on small independent establishments in rural areas;
   
5. in the Lake District, tourist takings for March 2001 were down to a quarter of average levels the previous March; 
   
6. the ability to pursue open-air activities like walking or cycling is a major reason for visiting rural areas at all: for example over half of UK-based visitors to Cumbria become involved in such activities; 
   
7. in the Lake District and Peak District, retailers of outdoor clothing and equipment have had their turnover reduced by up to a half; 
8. 80% of licensed outdoor leisure centres have been closed, with the remainder operating on reduced programmes; and
   
9. losses associated with riding, livery stables and trekking centres have been running at an estimated £29 million per week.  

3. Clearly, mass closure of rights of way networks and open access land due to FMD was not solely responsible for these substantial losses to the rural economy. Many visitor attractions unconnected with countryside access have also been closed because of FMD, and other factors contributing to the decline in rural tourism will have included: 

1. the public's wish to avoid encountering culling in progress, dead livestock, distraught farmers or depressed communities; 
   
2. uninformed concern about 'catching' FMD; and
   
3. people's uncertainty about whether their very presence in the countryside could help to spread the disease.  

4. Nevertheless, lessons from the FMD outbreak include clear confirmation that, for many tourism-related businesses, the availability of an accessible local countryside can represent the difference between survival and failure. 

5. The recent strategy for rural tourism in England "Working for the Countryside" (English Tourism Council and Countryside Agency, 2001) identified walking as "by far the most popular holiday activity" and listed a range of wider countryside recreation activities, including cycling and horse riding, that also significantly underpin the tourist economy. The strategy argued for increasing this contribution:

1. by improving and promoting local opportunities to pursue such activities; 
   
2. by improving in particular the scope for those without transport, or with young families, to pursue them; and 
   
3. by other means, such as encouraging visitors to shop locally and linking local products with the character and identity of the area.  

Access and the farm economy

6. DTZ's draft findings show that many farms have diversified in recent years, with over 60% now deriving some kind of income from outside agriculture. But the bulk of farm incomes still come primarily from:

1. sales of produce such as crops, meat, dairy products or timber; and
   
2. subsidies and grants from the state.  

Sales of produce

7. Most produce is sold to wholesalers. The accessibility (or otherwise) to the public of the land that produced it has no bearing on this income. Farm shops do best in popular tourist areas, as do direct sales of farm produce to local hotels, shops etc. But even in such areas there is often no direct relationship between the accessibility of land to the public and the income that can be derived from its produce.

Subsidies and grants

8. Some £2bn of the taxpayer's money is invested each year in supporting and influencing rural land management in England and Wales through subsidies, grants and tax reliefs. 95% of this investment takes no account of whether the land has any public access: this includes all of the main spending programmes. The remaining 5% produces a mixture of required access, optional access or no access at all, depending on the approach taken by the particular programme.

Perception of access as a 'penalty'

9. Since there is often no formal linkage between the accessibility of their land and the income they derive from it, many land managers see public access, if it occurs at all, as a 'penalty' on their operation. They may feel it imposes extra costs on them - perhaps through impacts on production or by requiring some form of additional management - without bringing them any financial benefit. This kind of view is least likely to prevail if the farmer is selling directly to tourists (eg through a farm shop, tea-room or B&B operation) - but even then, such people-related income may not turn on people having recreational access to the land itself: they will often arrive and leave by road, for example.

How might access become an asset for land managers too?

10. The public seek and value countryside access opportunities. They lie at the heart of the tourism economy. Yet if anything, access land has so far been less eligible for subsidies from the public purse than intensively farmed, inaccessible farmland.

11. In the post-FMD era, with the Rural Development Regulation taking gradual effect, there may be scope for change. The Rural White Paper speaks of moving environmental and social goals closer to the heart of agricultural policy. The Countryside Agency is producing a Strategy for Sustainable Land Management in England setting out its proposals for achieving this.

12. Recent years have seen a growing emphasis on providing incentives for land managers to produce and maintain non-market goods like landscape and wildlife. To date, the budgets available have been small compared to those funding mainstream agriculture, and public access has played no little or part in many of the local agreements made.

13. There may be scope over time for the mainstream revenue funding and/or established tax relief packages currently applied to the countryside to focus increasingly on securing the environmentally sensitive management of land that is available for public access - perhaps with a premium paid in cases where access is permanent, eg under statute or a voluntary dedication. In this way, having accessible land could make the land manager eligible for financial benefits that might not be available on other land.

14. Pursuing such options - if desirable at all - would be likely to take time. Individual EU member states collectively determine policy over what products and services are to be 'bought' through agricultural budgets. Access is not a serious issue for many member states. 

15. Government has more direct control of eligibility for tax relief. It might be possible to focus more of this relief on achieving positive management of land to which the public has access. At present the great majority of inheritance tax relief on farmland or woodland is given automatically and unconditionally.

16. With suitable funding from Government, a new Land Management Initiative - perhaps in an area hard hit by FMD - might pilot the approach of linking the accessibility of land with positive benefits to land managers' incomes. Such a programme could encourage positive management of land with public access - delivering wildlife and landscape benefits, and making it easier for people to enjoy the land in a way that sits well with its other uses. Relevant ideas are set out in NCAF paper 8/3, which considered the possible role of such an incentives scheme for access land.

17. A further option would be for National Lottery funding to encourage the voluntary creation of new permanent access rights over land (perhaps using the dedication powers at CROW section 16), and along routes (eg new paths opening up 'islands' of common, open country etc that the public cannot lawfully reach at present). Such a programme might also support the permanent reversion of land to open country, to join up existing fragments of down, heath or common to form more useful, manageable, wildlife-rich places for people to enjoy.

18. NCAF members are invited to discuss the principles in this paper, the desirability of making access more financially attractive to land managers, and the options for pursuing this aim.