Belfast council officers are advising elected representatives to assert a public right of way against a private landowner after a gate was erected on a path in East Belfast and welded shut.
Officials have written a report for the council’s People and Communities Committee, advising councillors to vote to assert a public right of way on foot from Orby Green to Orby Link, beside Castlereagh Road. The committee was supposed to meet this week but was postponed for Queen Elizabeth’s period of mourning.
The report quotes the Access to the Countryside (Northern Ireland) Order 1983, which places a duty on councils to “assert, protect and keep open and free from obstruction or encroachment any public right of way.”
