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When the King’s 2,700-mile England Coast Path was in planning, only a tiny fraction of the 25,000 landowners consulted about the project raised objections.
Many talked about potential rewards. “Camping, caravanning, bed and breakfasts, cream teas, you name it,” said Neil Constable, of Natural England.
Honor Scott’s family can attest to the value of living near a well-known footpath.
Her great-great-grandfather established Matson Ground, a mixed upland farm in the heart of the Lake District National Park, in 1923. Securing certified organic status in 2000, today it covers 500 hectares of farmland and woodland above Windermere.
In 2019, the family converted Birkdale House, an original Lake District villa on the farm, into a holiday let that sleeps 10 and boasts views of Lake Windermere and the fells. Not only that, but the Dales Way, a 79-mile footpath connecting Ilkley in West Yorkshire to Bowness-on-Windermere in Cumbria, lies just 100m from the house.
While Scott, 29, accepts that there are occasional problems with walkers, most are well-intentioned. “The footpaths literally bring people to the door, which is not only great for the holiday lets but also for our business as we’re hoping to start selling our meat direct to customers.
“If they’ve seen the way the animals live on the farm while walking through, what better way to market our products?”
Alongside visitors, Scott points out that lots of locals regularly use the footpath, too.
“It’s so nice for us as we get to know the people who live here better and they have a connection to the farm.
“In June this year, we did a pop-up burger stand using farm produce at the Lake District Book Festival for the first time and ended up feeding lots of those who walk through the fields and past our cattle, which was great.”
A mixed blessing
However, living on or near a public footpath can be a mixed blessing. For those who run businesses such as campsites and cafés, a steady stream of walkers can provide valuable passing trade.
But for homeowners, the same access can bring a loss of privacy and may affect a property’s value. And because public rights of way are legally protected, re-routing a path can be a difficult, lengthy process.
When someone is trying to sell a country property, the presence of a footpath can create tension. Back in 2007, when a retired entrepreneur, who did not want to give his name, bought his house in East Suffolk, the conveyancing lawyer failed to spot that there was one footpath running up the side of the property and another going through some marshy ponds in the garden.
“In reality, there was already a de facto diversion in place, so no one had used either path for years,” he said.
But recently, when preparing for the house to go on the market, the two footpaths appeared in the local searches conducted by the estate agent. The owners were advised that their presence could take £50,000 off the property’s value or cause a buyer to get cold feet entirely.
The owners approached the council to have the footpaths extinguished from the register, a process that involved a series of consultations with the parish council, the Ramblers (formerly the Ramblers’ Association), and members of the public.
The request was granted, provided the couple installed a gate and paid £4,500 in fees. In all, it took about a year to go through.
The fact that no one uses the paths makes the process easier, but well-established footpaths are notoriously hard to move. Precedent plays a significant role, especially for unmarked paths, if there is evidence they have been used frequently for more than 20 years.
Cheffins, a firm of surveyors, has recently had success with a beef-farming client based in East Anglia. The 800-acre family-run farm had a popular footpath running through the middle of the busy farmyard, which they wanted to have diverted.
While there were no formal objections to the plans and the new route was only marginally longer than the previous one, the process took five years and cost the family approximately £5,000 in fees. “In my 30-year-long career, I’ve only worked on a couple of these projects. They aren’t for the faint-hearted,” says Simon Gooderham, a chartered surveyor.
Buyer beware
Many of those who dream of owning a house along the 422 miles of Cornwall’s coastline will have to contend with the South West Coast Path in some way.
When Harlyn House, a historic 15th-century Cornish mansion near Padstow, was put on the open market for £3m in 2017, Clare Coode, of Stacks Property Search, viewed it on behalf of clients, but no one was willing to take the plunge.
“The problem was that a footpath goes across the drive and they weren’t prepared to take that on. In the end, it was turned into The Pig at Harlyn. It’s the perfect solution: as a hotel, the footpath presents no problems.”
There are safety responsibilities that all landowners take on when a footpath crosses their property. Permanent or temporary blockages, such as locked gates or an overgrown hedge, are unlawful. If the highway authority is forced to intervene, the landowner can ultimately be billed for the work, explains Matthew Scott of estate agent Strutt & Parker.
The quirks of owning a property on or near a coastal path go further, says Coode. “It’s not just about where the path is now but where it might be in the future – thanks to coastal erosion. If it gets worse, the path which goes in front of the house may need to be rerouted around the back – not everyone has bargained for that.”
Screening is an option, but it is an expensive one, and not much apart from gorse grows happily when being bashed by Atlantic winds, and it can mean a view becomes obscured.
Footpaths can have a greater effect on home values away from the coastal path, where the loss of privacy is felt more keenly.
The thatch-and-honeystone hamlets, plunging valleys, and pretty beech woods that make up the Cotswolds National Landscape have long attracted walkers clutching copies of OS maps in waterproof cases. The area has one of the highest concentrations of footpaths in England.
Gemma Maclaran, of buying agent Prime Purchase, estimates that a footpath running close to a house or through the garden could potentially take 20pc off the value.
For some people, however, ramblers popping up in their garden do not bother them.
The 186-mile Pembrokeshire Coast Path runs just a few metres from the house of an IT consultant, who did not want to give her name. She has very few quibbles about having people walking past her front door.
“I just gave directions to a group of eight walkers and a dog so they could avoid a field full of cows. Coastal path walkers are generally lovely,” says the 53-year-old.
In Scotland, the Land Reform Act 2003 has granted the public the “right to roam” since its introduction. This means that people have the freedom to walk, cycle, ride, and wild camp on most land and inland waters across the country, provided they do so responsibly.
In the last few years, those campaigning for a Scottish-style model to be rolled out all over the UK say momentum has grown. To date, however, the Government has not committed to adopting such a model, making a wholesale transplantation of Scotland’s system unlikely for now.
So those living on footpaths remain in a unique position, whether they like it or not.
