Ramblers and countryside lovers were relieved last year when the government said it would ditch the 2026 deadline for recording lost footpaths in England. But in a sudden change of direction, rather than scrapping deadlines altogether, environment secretary Thérèse Coffey has imposed a new date of 1 January, 2031. After this, public rights over thousands of paths that are public highways but not yet recorded as such, or those not correctly recorded, will be extinguished. What’s more, it will no longer be possible to use historical evidence to apply for a new right of way to be added to official maps after that date. This means ancient footpaths trodden by walkers for centuries could be lost forever. The independent media platform openDemocracy claims that Coffey’s U-turn came after a request to her department from the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), which represents landowners. The Don’t Lose Your Way campaign run by the Ramblers, a British walking charity, has identified 41,000 miles of rights of way across England that do not currently appear on official maps. The Ramblers’ head of paths, Jack Cornish, says the group has 600 volunteers working on the research required to save the rights of way, but that any deadline puts unnecessary pressure on under-resourced local authorities. The Ramblers believe there’s already a backlog of more than 4,000 applications waiting to be processed. Cornish told UKhillwalking.com that unless the government rethinks their latest decision, or puts the necessary funding in place for paths to be researched, applied for and processed within the time limit imposed, historic paths will be “lost for future generations”. Meantime, the government’s environment department, Defra, claims it is “moving forward” with plans to reform existing bureaucratic processes so it’s easier and faster to update the legal record of rights of way.