The Yorkshire Post
’01.07.21
Council Ready To Defy
Call To Reopen Footpaths

Sally Cope and Brian Dooks

G
OVERNMENT plans to reopen footpaths closed due to the foot-and-mouth epidemic are being opposed in Yorkshire over fears of spreading the disease.

Many footpaths in the Bradford district will stay shut despite a ruling by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that increased numbers should open from next Friday.

And in North Yorkshire, a farmer is calling for the National Trust to take High Court action to overturn a Government decision forcing it to open public rights of way across the Fountains Abbey deer park.

Bradford Council is using Article 28 of the Foot and Mouth Disease Order 1983 to keep paths closed which were due to be opened by DEFRA on July 27.

Footpaths in the infected area will remain closed if they go through grazed fields, pass through farms under investigation or are infected by the disease.

The ban on using footpaths through premises inside a 3 km foot and mouth protection zone will also remain in force.

The infected area runs north of a line from Apperley Bridge to Oxenhope and includes farms recently hit by foot and mouth in Silsden and Crag Top Farm on the outskirts of Keighley.

However the council has given in to DEFRA following efforts to keep Baildon Moor closed, but the council warns it could be closed again if there were more outbreaks nearby.

Derrick Slater, who has 100 in-calf dairy heifers in fields adjoining the deer park at Plumpton Hall, Studley Roger, near Ripon, said he and neighbouring farmers were desperately worried about visitors walking across the site.

Mr Slater, the chairman of Fountains parish council, said a legal challenge against the ruling should be mounted by the National Trust.  However the trust declined to comment on the matter of legal action last night.

Last night a DEFRA spokesman in London said: “Our advice is quite clear.  If veterinary experts say there is even a tiny risk from opening a right of way then it should not be opened”.

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