Breadcrumbs
Public Rights Of Way Good Practice Guide Web Site
In 1999 the Countryside Agency, the County Surveyors Society (CSS), Institute of Public Rights of Way Officers (IPROW), and Local Government Association (LGA) formed a partnership to consider how to share information about rights of way work. The partnership agreed to collate examples of good practice, using text which had been prepared either by the editors, or local authority staff involved in rights of way work. A list of topics to be covered was drafted but from the outset this was intended to be an evolving and growing source of advice.
CD Rom
The first installment was produced as a CD Rom and launched at the IPROW conference in 2000 as the Public Rights of Way Good Practice Guide. At that stage it was intended to be re-issued twice a year with new updated material. The launch of the CD Rom, and the promotional flyer that went with it, called for more material to fill the gaps in the information provided and also for ROW officers to offer examples of better practice of existing material if they could.
The Countryside Agency funded the CSS ROW officer to manage the GPG in 2001/02. He reviewed existing material and sought extra material for priority areas of the guide. However, during that period there were very few offers of new material and for various reasons, including work associated with the foot and mouth disease outbreak, the momentum for re-issuing the GPG was lost.
Web-site
In autumn 2002 the GPG partners agreed that the CD Rom format had not proved to be the most useful for day to day use by ROW staff and that it would be best to re-launch the GPG on a web site which would offer a more interactive facility. The site went live in May 2003 under the domain name www.prowgpg.org.uk, and branded with the partnership of CA, CSS, LGA and IPROW.
The site allows discussion of issues amongst practitioners and for material to be added or changed regularly, and it includes a facility for the discussion and development of work in progress. Additionally, it includes public pages for the material which is envisaged by the partners as good practice. Although these pages contain essentially static core material, they will also be kept under review and updated when changes are required.
Accordingly, commencing this autumn, IPROW is employing (for two years) a CA sponsored site co-ordinator, whose job will include developing and updating further sections of the of the GPG, which will involve proactively seeking new material from a variety of sources, exploring how the GPG site could become self-financing in two years, and making recommendations to the partners.
DAVID GEAR
September 2003
