Contract: Rights of Way Improvement Plan (ROWIP) Consultancy
Client: Brecon Beacons National Park
Having worked for the Countryside Agency as part of a consultancy team managing the ROWIP pilots across England, we have developed considerable experience in this area and have recently brought this to bear on a ROWIP scoping and planning contract for the Brecon Beacons National Park Authority.
Utilising funding support from the Countryside Council for Wales, the Authority asked us to develop a detailed structure for their ROWIP, a delivery plan and an outline of the scope and content. We also developed an estimate of the resources that the Authority would need to successfully complete the task, and looked at relationship between the ROWIP and the range of other statutory and other plans that guide and refine the Authority's work.
Detailed discussions with Authority staff both one to one and through a working group was combined with a detailed analysis of existing PROW information, existing strategies and a thorough review of the legislative requirements to inform our draft scoping document. The final report, agreed with the Authority has now been used to secure the necessary resources and to guide the ROWIP officers in their work.
Further information Jon Young.
Contract: Rights of Way Survey
Client: Cornwall County Council
exeGesIS has undertaken 25,000 km of PROW survey over the last three years and have built a network of trained and experienced path surveyors. Although presently working on several path inventory and condition surveys, our largest contract is a 100% survey of the 4,500km network of paths in Cornwall.
We were awarded the contract in the spring of 2004 and following detailed discussions with Cornwall rights of way staff on the detailed survey methodology and condition assessment standards, we appointed and trained a 5 strong survey team.
Utilising our ‘Path Surveyor’ System with integrated GPS and camera, the surveyors are making excellent progress and we are scheduled to complete on time this Autumn.
As part of the project, we are providing the Council with CAMS V5, fully populated with the results of the survey. We will also spend several days producing detailed analysis and reporting of results, including full upgrade maintenance cost calculations.
Further information Jon Young.
Contract: CROW Act - Lost Ways
Client: The Countryside Agency
Working with the Countryside and Community Research Unit of Gloucester University and other specialist consultants exeGesIS has contributed to a major contract on 'Lost Ways' research.
'Lost Ways' is the name given to a project to uncover and reassert all rights of way that are not presently recorded on definitive maps. A requirement brought into focus by the CROW legislation that will extinguish unrecorded historic rights by 2026.
The research addressed the full range of logistical and resource issues that arise from the task of meeting the 2026 deadline and also generated the estimate that the total length of Lost Ways in England and Wales is likely to be around 18,000km. A fully interactive web mapping system was built and demonstrated as a solution to the substantial task of coordinating and managing the research process on some 8,000 new paths. It is probable that such a system will be at the heart of the delivery of this work over the next 20 years.
Contract: Wales's rights of way condition survey 2002
Client: Countryside Council for Wales
The CCW contracted exeGesIS to design and deliver a survey to establish the condition of the path network to provide estimates of the resources required to properly maintain public rights of way in Wales. The project comprised a core survey using professional surveyors and supplementary survey with volunteers. A sophisticated and rigorous sampling system was developed and 3,283 km of rights of way were surveyed across Wales.
The quality of core survey data was optimised through the use of hand-held computers linked to Global Positioning Systems and the automated downloading of data directly to a central database eliminated errors that might otherwise have arisen during a manual transfer process. Advanced spatial analysis of the survey data was achieved using GIS.
Results showed that the frequency of serious problems (i.e. those that render a path unusable) along the network ranged between authority areas from 1 every 1.75km, to 1 every 400m. Nationally the frequency was 1 every 650m. It was concluded that the public rights of way in Wales were generally in poor condition and that this was preventing the full realisation of sustainable tourism, amenity use and the generation of potential health benefits to users.
Conclusions were drawn about the limitations of some existing approaches to monitoring network condition and recommendation made to improve annual monitoring surveys through the use of more rigorous sampling regimes, the convergence of evaluation standards and the adoption of a new 'best value performance indicator'.
Further information contact Jon Young.