I have a public footpath running through my back garden.
Except I don’t.
Cornwall Council says I do.
I’ve lived at our property in Cornwall for sixteen years. There are three public footpaths that arrive at a central courtyard between three properties we own.
It’s Cornwall. Footpaths are fucking everywhere.
I know where these particular footpaths are because I live there.
I see people walking them.
I’ve walked them.
I’ve watched their dogs arrive in my courtyard several minutes before their owners.
I am, somewhat reluctantly, a fucking expert in these footpaths.
This becomes important.
We recently submitted a planning application for a detached annexe at the property.
No building work.
No extension.
Nothing particularly exciting.
It’s essentially a change of use so the annexe can be used as a residence.
Straightforward.
Although after sixteen years dealing with Cornwall Council, I’ve learned that straightforward is a dangerous word.
As part of the application, we submitted the usual drawings, including the public footpaths.
I drew them where they are.
I didn’t consult Cornwall Council’s Definitive Map.
Why would I?
I live there.
It genuinely didn’t occur to me that I should consult a map to establish whether the footpaths I can physically see every day are actually where I think they are.
Apparently this was my first mistake.
During the consultation period, the Countryside Access Team responded:
“This application directly impacts a Public Right of Way as the plans show that development has already taken place on or over some part of a Public Right of Way.
The applicant will need to divert the Public Right of Way, there is a formal and legally-binding process that should be followed…”
For fuck’s sake. They think we somehow moved the footpaths.
Here we go.
Fucking Cornwall. Fucking footpaths.
Because we’ve met this particular problem before.
Cornwall Council’s Definitive Map shows one of the footpaths going through our back garden.
There is just one slight problem.
It doesn’t.
And as far as we can establish, it never has.
If you attempted to follow the route shown on the Definitive Map, you wouldn’t wander innocently into our garden.
You’d be stopped dead by a rather substantial Cornish stone hedge.
So you’d have to climb over that.
But that’s only the beginning.
The ground level changes substantially beyond it as well.
Following Cornwall Council’s route would involve a change in elevation of more than two metres over perhaps six to eight metres.
Then you’d enter our private garden.
And then…
Nothing.
There’s no obvious route out.
No obvious continuation of the footpath.
You’ve climbed over a Cornish hedge, negotiated a substantial change in elevation and wandered into someone’s private domestic curtilage.
Congratulations.
According to the map, you’re walking.
There is, however, a perfectly serviceable footpath running alongside it.
On relatively flat ground.
The one people actually use.
The one shown on the 1875 map.
The one I drew.
This discrepancy isn’t something we’ve just discovered.
We’ve raised it with the council before.
In 2018, during an entirely separate inquiry concerning the footpaths around the property, Cornwall Council’s own Countryside Access Records Officer directed us towards the historical map record.
Specifically, he suggested looking at the large-scale Ordnance Survey sheets at 25 inches to the mile, which he said would:
“show why the recorded paths terminate where they do at the courtyard to the farmstead at [redacted]”
So we looked.
And found an Ordnance Survey map surveyed in 1875 and published in 1878.
Nearly 150 years ago.
Guess where the footpath is?
Where I fucking drew it.
My planner went back to the council.
We provided the historical map.
We explained the discrepancy.
Then we waited.
And waited.
Our planning decision date came.
And went.
So my planner chased them.
Eventually we received this:
“The Countryside Access Team have now gone back to [redacted] and requested that the footpath routes are shown on the plans in accordance with their Definitive Map.”
I knew exactly what they wanted.
In fact, I’d already anticipated it.
When this first came up, I’d prepared an alternative version of the drawing showing the footpath where Cornwall Council says it is rather than where it actually is.
My planner sent it over.
“I have sent the amended plans across showing the routes as requested, so hopefully that deals with their point.”
And there we have it.
Problem solved.
The footpath hasn’t moved.
The hedge hasn’t moved.
The garden hasn’t moved.
Nobody has diverted anything.
People will continue walking exactly where they’ve always walked.
But the line on our drawing now agrees with the line on their drawing.
Everything is fine again.
To be fair, there may be a perfectly legitimate procedural reason for this.
The Definitive Map is the council’s official record. Perhaps planning drawings are required to show the definitive route regardless of what appears to exist physically on the ground.
Fine.
I can live with that.
In fact, I’ve complied with it.
And there was some good news.
The email continued:
“The good news is that [redacted] has confirmed that her recommendation is otherwise to approve the application.”
Great.
And on 25 August, Cornwall Council granted planning permission.
We won.
Then I read the additional information attached to the decision.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
“Given the Public Rights of Way are already obstructed (both [redacted] and [redacted]), a Public Path Diversion Order will need to be made to alter the route of the Public Rights of Way.”
So apparently the footpath isn’t merely in the wrong place on our drawing anymore.
We’re obstructing it.
And we need to pay to divert it (it’s £3,500 btw!)
Except we haven’t diverted it.
The hedge hasn’t moved.
The garden hasn’t moved.
The physical path hasn’t moved.
The only thing we’ve changed is our drawing.
At Cornwall Council’s request.
But there’s something else.
They haven’t just said that the footpath we’ve been arguing about is obstructed.
They’ve identified another one, a completely different footpath.
It runs alongside one of our other buildings.
And this one is even more confusing.
It hasn’t moved either.
The building was originally a ruin. We obtained planning permission to reconstruct it in 2015.
The site plan submitted with that planning application explicitly shows the public footpath running alongside the building. Nothing changed.
Exactly where it is today.
The building hasn’t subsequently moved.
The footpath hasn’t subsequently moved.
And if we go back to that Ordnance Survey map surveyed in 1875, the historic route around the farmstead is there too.
So now Cornwall Council says two public footpaths are obstructed.
One appears to disagree with its Definitive Map despite historical evidence supporting the physical route.
The other is shown running alongside a building on a planning drawing submitted to Cornwall Council when permission was granted to reconstruct the building.
At this point I have a fairly basic question.
What exactly have we obstructed?
As a software engineer, I find this fascinating.
Because I’ve seen this behaviour before.
A system starts out as a representation of reality.
Then, over time, the organisation becomes so dependent upon the system that something strange happens.
When reality and the system disagree, the system wins.
“The system says…”
“But that’s not what happened.”
“Yes, but that’s what the system says.”
And eventually it becomes easier to change the representation of reality than investigate whether the underlying data is wrong.
The validation passes.
The workflow continues.
The box turns green.
Problem solved.
Except nothing has been solved.
And now we’re seeing what happens next.
Once the representation has been accepted as reality, the discrepancy becomes somebody else’s problem.
The system says the footpath goes through the garden.
The physical world says it doesn’t.
Therefore the problem isn’t necessarily the map.
The physical world must be obstructing the footpath.
And apparently the solution is for us to pay to change the physical world.
The title of this article was supposed to be sarcastic.
It’s becoming disturbingly literal.
There are still two completely different problems here.
One was my planning application.
The other is a potentially incorrect public record.
They didn’t need to block each other.
And, eventually, they didn’t.
We have our planning permission.
But when credible evidence arrives suggesting another piece of council data might be wrong, create another piece of work.
Investigate it.
That’s what a functioning system should do.
Instead, we’ve now been told that two footpaths are obstructed and that a formal diversion process is required.
So this time we’re not changing another drawing.
We’ve written to Cornwall Council’s Public Rights of Way team.
We’ve asked them to identify precisely what they believe is obstructing each footpath.
We’ve asked where those obstructions are.
We’ve asked when they believe they occurred.
We’ve asked what evidence supports those conclusions.
We’ve given them the historical mapping.
We’ve given them their own previous correspondence directing us towards that historical mapping.
We’ve given them the 2015 site plan showing the other public footpath alongside the building that didn’t move.
And we’ve invited them to come to the property and look for themselves.
Because perhaps, eventually, somebody might do the thing I thought should have happened in the first place.
That’s odd.
Investigate it.
Look at the evidence.
Look at the history.
Look at the physical world.
Send someone out if necessary.
Work out what the correct routes actually are.
And if the Definitive Map is wrong, begin whatever process is required to correct it.
That seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to expect from the organisation responsible for maintaining the Definitive Map.
What I’m not going to do is pay to divert a footpath that hasn’t been diverted.
So for now, the planning permission is granted.
The footpaths are still exactly where they were.
The buildings are still exactly where they were.
The stone hedge is still exactly where it was.
And somewhere in Cornwall Council’s systems, apparently, we’re obstructing two public highways.
We’ll see what they say.
The map is wrong.
Please stop asking me to change reality.
This is what we pay our fucking taxes for.