Labour would extend the right to wild camp to all national parks if elected, the party has said following the restoration of the right on Dartmoor by the high court.
On Monday, the court of appeal ruled that wild camping on Dartmoor was lawful without landowner permission, overturning a high court ruling in favour of a landowner who wanted to ban the practice. Ruling on the appeal, Sir Geoffrey Vos, the master of the rolls, said wild camping counted as “open-air recreation” as allowed in the 1985 Dartmoor Commons Act.
The high-profile case brought to light a love for wild camping across all sections of British society and campaigners are hatching plans for legislation to widen the legal right to wild camp without landowner permission.
The shadow environment minister, Alex Sobel, said: “Labour would legislate so that people visiting national parks have the right to wild camp, as well as expanding public access to woodlands and waterways.”
Some point to Scotland’s successful legislation around wild camping, where the Land Reform (Scotland) Acts 2003 and 2016 enshrine the right to responsibly access land and inland water for recreation purposes. An accompanying Scottish Outdoor Access Code defines responsible access, explicitly including the right to wild camp.
Similar models that enshrine the right to wild camp as part of a broader freedom to roam exist in Europe. For example, Sweden’s Allemansrätten creates an important basis for outdoor recreation across Scandinavia and promotes the right of everyone to enjoy nature.
Kate Ashbrook is the general secretary of the Open Spaces Society, which provided legal help to the Dartmoor case. Founded in 1865, it is Britain’s oldest national conservation body.
She hopes the response to the Dartmoor case could lead to the right to wild camp being extended across England in areas where ramblers have access under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act.
“The Dartmoor case has shown how much people want and need to be able to enjoy backpack camping, but there are very few places where they have that right,” Ashbrook said.
“The easiest way to extend wild camping is to remove the restriction in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 (Crow) so that all the access land mapped under Crow (mountain, moor, heath, down, and registered common land) would be available for backpack camping. Where appropriate this could then be restricted on an individual basis. That could be achieved through secondary legislation, regulations, and would open up thousands of hectares to wild camping by right. It would be a great start.”
Nick Hall, from the Campaign for National Parks, supports wild camping being allowed in all national parks – as long as people act responsibly and leave no trace.
“Recognising the long tradition of this low-impact way of accessing and enjoying our protected landscapes, Campaign for National Parks believes there is a case for the creation of a rights-based approach to leave-no-trace wild camping on open access land in National p arks (England and Wales),” he said, “This would be contingent on the successful completion of trials to assess the impact of wild camping on communities and the local environment.
“As a minimum, this can be achieved through amending Crow to include wild camping as permissible outdoor recreation, with an accompanying responsible access code of conduct.”
There is legislation going through parliament calling for this. The Green MP Caroline Lucas has put forward the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 (amendment) bill that seeks the “right to camp on access land”, and the Liberal Democrats have tabled an early day motion that “calls on the government to bring forward new legislation to safeguard the rights of individuals to continue using national park land for camping without hindrance”.
However, both of these are unlikely to pass and do not have government support. Those who want wild camping rights to become more widespread may need to hope next year’s general election elects a greater number of MPs who believe in extending land rights.
Kevin Bishop, the chief executive of the Dartmoor National Park Authority, said he had been consulting with other national park CEOs on a policy to allow all children to spend a night under the stars as part of the curriculum.
He said: “Any move to extend the right to roam needs to be accompanied with a programme that connects people, at an early age, with the countryside. English national parks have an ambition that every young person will have an opportunity to visit a national park as part of their formal education.”
David Butterworth, the CEO of the Yorkshire Dales national park, agreed. He said: “I am personally supportive of the Scottish model in relation to access. The principle is a fine one but England is a different country, we need to look at practical implementation. There really has to be a better link between education and the use of the countryside. We have an aim we would like to see in manifestos that every school child should have a right to have a night under the stars in a national park near to them, so they would realise from a young age why these landscapes are precious. They are to be loved, not to be abused.”
