Croglin IMPORTANT

[brian day]

I received a telephone call from the country warden this morning asking if any of our pilots had been flying in the area of Croglin. There is not a problem, as he now knows to contact us.
Land workers, farmers etc and land owners can apply for up to 28 days in a year to close open access land to everyone.
Croglin is subject to this closure between 26th May - 5th June and again on 8th - 9th June.

[Sad Northerner]

Interesting? maybe we should phone him back to confirm that we will gladly avoid this area.....on these dates.

Ali

[brian day]

I have assured him I would post the details and have given him my email address. He is going to send me info, which I will pass to Ron Don so that he can make contact. He was going to try and give us shooting dates as well. He did say that during the 'Champagne Luncheons' anything that casts a shadow on the ground is shot at, so those dates may be quite,,,errr,,,useful?

[ron freeman]

can't stop laughing at Ali's post

[GlennP]

Again another case of only half the facts being made available.

The land cant be closed to everyone by a farm worker, he doesn't have the legal right to do it as a commoner, only someone with the legal right can place restrictions and even then they are limited by what they can do. If there are public Rights of Way across the land they are NOT affected by these restrictions and the details of the restriction should be posted at access/egress points on this parcel of land (which wasn't the case) and the details made available via the Natural England website.

By the way as with the previous case DEFRA/NE are not enforcement agencies and their wardens appear to have no legal right to restrict NHPC access as they are not party to our private contract with the landowner for access for our sport.

These restrictions are , half the time, to limit people bringing dogs onto the land. This is the case with one of the restrictions at Croglin and does not affect us in anyway whatsoever.

The other restriction is for public access to the the Open Access land under the CROW Act. The Land Manager has 28 days allowance to do that in each calendar year but between June and Sept cannot restrict access at the weekends. Also I don't believe access for the general public can be removed to Open Access land for the purpose of wildlife preservation, fire prevention, errosion etc etc when this is blantantly not the case.

As an individual I tend to question anyone in authority who tells me not to do something as it's usually half cocked, full of self interest or some other erroneous agenda. If the clubs representatives want to call the Natural England helpline, quoting case numbers and asking for details of the restrictions and who requested them, the picture may become clearer. They could also inform the warden/NE that we have negotiated rights of access for which we have made financial consideration to the landowner and are not undertaking our activities under the Open Access agreement but a seperate 'contract' with the landowner. Any member of the public can appeal against restrictions for the general public for Open Access with NE.

I can provide anyone who wants information about this ,web links etc etc ,as I am not part of the clubs committee or it's sites officer. I'm sure our learned members of the club could offer a more accurate legal assessment.