The WBRA received information of a new group (HAC UK) which has been set up to be:

A single voice for horse access. HAC UK has been set up to bring together all those organisations and individuals working for or supporting the provision of safe inclusive access routes and networks for the horse. Groups, organisations, individual riders, carriage drivers, horse owners and others are asked to support HAC UK to create a single powerful campaign lobby to demonstrate that we are not the minority we are perceived to be.

This was discussed at a committee meeting, and your committee agreed this was a very worthy group, and the WBRA would be fully supporting HAC and it's aims. It was also felt WBRA members might also wish to join the group, which is lobbying to improve access to off road riding for everyone of us.

This is the information we received from the founder.

The Horse Access campaign has been launched on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/HorseAccessUK/

HAC UK will work, lobby and campaign nationally for safe access routes and networks for the horse.

HAC UK invites you / your organisation to join this urgent national campaign to get the horse’s voice listened to and acted upon by Government and Local Government by:-

·    Encouraging your individual members to join – numbers do count – let’s make this voice powerful and strong

 ·    Posting your support on the page with organisation logo

 ·    By linking your group to HAC UK

HAC UK is asking all horse and other access organisations, access officers, and interested individuals to join together in one inclusive powerful national lobby movement to support, encourage, educate and inspire all horse riders, owners and others to campaign and for the creation a fully inclusive safe multi-user national network of connecting routes and to share information, updates and to share your experiences and ask questions.

This action has been taken following a meeting between concerned representatives from The Byway and Bridleway Trust, the National Federation of Bridleways Associations, The Trails Trust, Better Tracks Better Trails, Bucks and Wadey, a Local Access Forum and the British Horse Society (Access) – who together have a wealth of rights of way experience and geographical coverage.

HAC UK has sets out six lobby points which would extend, restore and create a safe network of countryside and urban multi user (foot, horse, cycle) routes.

Six lobby points were broadly agreed as being central to access aspirations.

1. Improving road safety on roads that form part of the network

2. Extending inclusive multi user access on existing routes where horses are not currently included

3. Ensuring public good for public subsidies (particular reference to the Agriculture Bill)

4. Extending access through route creation

5. Restoring historical routes

6. Recording / ensuring the use of unsealed unclassified county roads

HAC UK fully supports the efforts of all existing access organisations, individuals and road safety groups, HAC UK does not aim to supplant any of this amazing work. HAC UK aims to draw everyone together and forward into a better future for access.

Recently, following the government decision to remove the 2026 deadline for registering "lost" Rights of Way, HAC UK and The Trails Trust issued the following statement.

2000-2022 (2026 RIP) What a journey!

So from Discovering Lost Ways to cutting off the cut off date what has been learnt? I think we have learnt to be brave in articulating the value of old green (lanes, roads and paths) infrastructure to society - it has a financial and economic benefit value, a heritage, historical and cultural value, a health and well being value, a biodiversity and nature recovery value, an active travel and recreational value. It is wider and deeper and infinitely more valuable than just a 'right of way'.

So thanks are due to all of you who campaigned, offered advice to campaigners, those who wrote to MPs and to others in the belief we could cut off the cut off date and all the work that has been done by BHS and all its Dobbin volunteers and bridleway associations and the ramblers finding all those lost miles.

And especial thanks to our MP James Heappey Minister for the Armed Forces (mine and Joanna Roseff's and Lynn Myland's MP) who politely deployed his tanks on Defra's lawn and requested a meeting with Lord Benyon to see if this thing could be sorted out and thanks to TTT members for asking the trustees to act and to Paul Hooper OBE our brilliant Chair who said that we should campaign right across Government and show other departments how the loss of these ways could affect them and their aspirations

Which resulted in this document, one of the many letters TTT sent formally last December to various Government Departments and now posted here for posterity - a sort of accumulation of everything that everyone said about 2026 - which we thought you would like to see.

We will never know what persuaded those at the top but of one thing TTT has always been sure it pays to work together, to talk, to consult, to listen and to aspire - whether we are a user group, a landowner or farmer, a Lord, MP or government official or even just a mad old woman on a pony who just loves the countryside.

A copy of the letter sent to Rishi Sunak regarding preservation of rights of way can be seen below.

Both HAC UK and The Trails Trust work  tirelessly on everyone's behalf, and we applaud their efforts.