Letter to Richard Clewer re Illey Lane public footpath

Dear Richard and Ruth

Is it acceptable for your County Council tractor to drive through an area of bluebells on a roadside verge, when you are promoting such verges to become nature reserves?

Is it acceptable for your Motorcycle Liaison Officer, yesterday morning, to tell me that a single tractor wheel track is the public footpath?  There remains the bluebells between the two tractor wheel tracks where the tractor went over them.  There are no bluebells in the wheel ruts themselves because of the soil compaction from the tractor.

The footpath that I started to dig keeps round the nature reserve verge and above it, next to the hedge.  Walkers are able to look down and across to see the bluebells from my public path.  My attractive path, with its ivy-covered floor in one area, continues high on the embankment and next to the farmers' fences to Illey Mill.

I hope you will allow me to finish the path and, that it will be made an official public right of way to be included on the definitive map.  I will keep it free of brambles and overgrowing hawthorn, until my demise but, walkers using the path will keep down other vegetation growth themselves.

Are you both at all concerned at the continuing loss of rural public footpaths as economic and population growth, with dangerous ecological damage as Attenborough warns us, continues to lead to rural becoming urban with yet more concrete, brick and tarmac?

Could the County Council be liable if there is an accident on this section of Illey Lane involving a pedestrian when you are not promoting, let alone providing, the off-road alternative, viz the public footpath?  And, it now needs to be signed, at both ends, to reduce the risk of injury and death to walkers who might, otherwise not realise the existence of the path.

Should road safety be your overriding concern, especially as more people are out walking as part of their daily coronavirus exercise?  And my path is a very necessary and, up to now, a completely overlooked provision to connect Halesowen with your footpath network at Illey Mill.

I look forward to receiving your answers, from both of you, please.

Yours sincerely

Tim Weller