Shona Butter, Mapping and Enforcement Team Leader, will be in attendance.

Shona Butter, Mapping and Enforcement Team Leader, provided an overview of the Team Plan for 15/16.   The plan set out the team’s aims and priorities and demonstrated that customers were being listened to.  The following points were highlighted:

Priorities – To improve people’s health and wellbeing and to support local communities to get active outdoors.  The team would support the natural environment and tourism economy, through the management and development of recreational access in Shropshire.  This would be done via the public rights of way network, countryside parks and sites, green spaces and play areas and open access land.

This would be achieved by:

·         Increasing active participation for all in a broad range of outdoor recreational activities and community volunteering to maximise health benefit:

o   Actions

§  Continued support to existing groups;

§  Grow current volunteering across the service; and

§  Develop a programme of new volunteering opportunities within the service

·         Developing and supporting local partnership approaches to the management, development and enhancement of local rights of way networks, countryside sites, greenspaces and the natural/historic heritage of Shropshire:

o   Actions

§  Develop a series of external funding bids to support growth of local partnerships;

§  Establish local priorities for rights of way improvements and developments through discussions with P3 groups; and

§  Continue to develop local partnerships with Parish and Town Councils in the management of greenspaces in urban areas.

·         Maintaining the infrastructure that underpins all types of recreational access and ensuring that the Council’s statutory duties in relation to them are complied with:

o   Actions

§  Rights of Way networks maintained;

§  Country Parks, Sites and Greenspaces maintained; and

§  Play infrastructure maintained.

·         Continuing to listen to local communities and ensuring that we meet community need in developing community recreational opportunities and externally funded projects:

o   Actions

§  Continue to listen and respond to our customers and locally identified need; and

§  Engage and support local communities and active volunteer groups on projects and external funding bids to develop and improve local access routes.

·         Working in partnership with statutory and non-statutory bodies in the management of access and special habitats in Shropshire to ensure that our rich and varied landscapes, and access to them, are protected and enhanced:

o   Actions

§  Deliver agreed actions within the Meres and Mosses HLF Landscape Partnership Scheme and NIA project; and

§  Deliver agreed actions within the Stiperstones and Corndon HLF Landscape Partnership Scheme.

·         Ensuring that Shropshire’s reputation as a great place to live, and visit is widely recognised and promoted and work to link different areas in such a way that they provide coordinated opportunities for walking, cycling and horse riding as well as ‘green corridors’ for wildlife;

o   Actions

§  Shropshire is promoted as a welcoming destination and local businesses are supported;

§  Develop, brand and promote a number of new short circular walks and rides to increase people’s use of the rights of way network; and

§  Development of the Shropshire’s Great Outdoors website to promote and co-ordinate all outdoor activity and opportunities.

·         Providing specialist and technical advice to conserve rights of way access, landscape features and wildlife habitats;

o   Actions

§  Ensure that the Definitive Map is accurate and up-to-date; and

§  Ensure that the Council’s statutory duties are carried out in relation to the public rights of way – issue resolution & enforcement.

·         Continuing to deliver good quality, value for money services aligned to Shropshire Council’s new model of delivery:

o   Actions

§  Business planning preparation for Outdoor Partnerships Service operation within a Commissioning Council.

SB and CF answered questions from the floor.  Arising from the ensuing discussion, CF would contact Alex Carson-Taylor to discuss corporate volunteering and sponsorship. 

Suggestions put forward to improve the development of recreational access and exercise included the provision of higher impact play areas to encourage teenagers and exercise areas for older people.  The importance of access for health benefits, rural economy and tourism and the need for more linked-up promoted routes was emphasised.