Social inequality for access to the outdoors uncovered In report by Ramblers
A new report by the Ramblers has uncovered the depth of social inequality for access to the outdoors. The old, wealthy, white and healthy in England & Wales enjoy up to 80% more paths in their local area than the most deprived in the country. Jack Cornish is Head of Paths at the organisation and says investment is needed.
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00:00 We found that just in terms of wellbeing value, there's a £2 billion a year value to the
00:07 rights of way network in England and Wales. However, we also found there's a real stark
00:12 inequality in where those paths are in relation to people. So for instance, the most affluent
00:20 communities have 80% more paths on their doorstep than the most deprived communities. So there's
00:25 a real inequality in terms of where our paths are in relation to people.
00:31 The old, the wealthy, the white and the healthy enjoy up to 80% more walkable path networks
00:37 in their local areas in comparison to the most deprived, highlighting the vast inequality
00:42 when it comes to accessing the outdoors. Reports show the damaging impact this has on these
00:47 areas both mentally and physically, with the number of heart attacks at the highest, where
00:52 the number of paths are the lowest.
00:54 During the COVID lockdowns, people really could see the physical and mental wellbeing
01:01 value that comes from just going out for a walk. And that can be for 20 minutes, or it
01:06 can be for going for an eight mile ramble. There's a whole massive wellbeing value to
01:12 that. And actually, we found in this research that where health outcomes are the lowest,
01:18 so for instance, on heart attack prevalence and mental health indices, the path network
01:24 is the least. And so, you know, there's a real, this is a real sort of public health
01:30 intervention in terms of, you know, improving and expanding our path network.
01:34 As 71% of people think more time, money and resources should be invested in the path network,
01:40 the Ramblers are calling for the government to invest an additional £650 million of funding
01:46 annually. This would help to expand the path networks by doubling the average length of
01:50 paths in a neighbourhood, resulting in an additional annual 78.5 million walks.
01:57 The Ramblers have identified almost 50,000 miles of lost paths that would make a massive
02:02 difference to communities. But the government have imposed a deadline of currently 2026,
02:08 maybe they're extending that to 2031 to record those paths. And we would like to get that
02:12 deadline got rid of. And then for instance, there's in our towns and cities where, you
02:17 know, we might not be able to create, you know, new meadows with rights of way running
02:21 through them. We'd like to see green routes. So that's improved streets that are traffic
02:26 calmed that ideally off, you know, off street entirely paths of, you know, routes of that
02:32 go through our towns and cities that enable everyone to get out for a good walk.
02:35 Being in nature and being involved, does that sort of help people stay connected to the
02:39 sort of environmental message that we all should be thinking about at the moment?
02:43 Yeah, I mean, 100% there's a real depth of research being sort of disconnected from nature
02:49 really, really means that people don't value it and don't actually want to protect and
02:55 preserve our amazing, our amazing ecologies, you know, where people can not use cars and
03:01 get out walking instead, you know, that will make a massive difference.