The coast is clear: Britons get historic right of way

Ministers are to open up the entire English coastline to the public in a historic and controversial extension of the "right to roam".

The move, which will make it possible to walk all 9,040 miles around the coast of Great Britain and create the first ever right of access to thousands of beaches, is provoking a bitter backlash from landowners and celebrities with expensive seaside properties, who will not be compensated.

It will also boost the profile of the fast-rising Secretary of State for the Environment, David Miliband, whose decision to push through the measure will win him new friends among Labour traditionalists, since access to the countryside is one of their most totemic issues.

Until now, the public has only had a right of access to about half of the country's coastline, mainly along paths, and - despite a popular misconception - none at all to most beaches. People are legally entitled to travel by boat over the foreshore when the tide is in, but not to walk on it when the waters recede.

Even where there are paths with rights of way, they often do not join up, or are blocked by private property, forcing walkers to make long detours inland.

Labour promised to improve access to the coast in its last election manifesto, and now Mr Miliband has decided to push through measures to create a "right to roam corridor" all round the English coast. This would automatically shift landwards if it was eroded away, allowing access to continue.

"England's coastline is a national treasure," Mr Miliband told The Independent on Sunday yesterday. "It should be the birth-right of every citizen. Many parts of the coast are already accessible but some are not. We want to create an access corridor so that people can walk the entire length of the English coast."

Scotland already has a legal right of access to its shores, and Wales is creating a path around its coastline so, once the measures are fully implemented, it will be possible to set off from any point on the coast of Great Britain and walk right round it to return to the same spot.

The measures, which were proposed in February by Natural England, the new official wildlife and countryside watchdog, are also designed to "formalise" access to "the vast majority" of beaches, and to widen the corridor to take in headlands and other uncultivated land. They will set out to persuade farmers not to plough and crop their land all the way to the cliff edge, and also to improve access for cyclists and horseriders.

The corridor would take 10 years to create and cost about £50m. There is a "presumption" against compensating land- owners, partly because of "the strength and intensity of the public interest in access".

Mr Miliband, whose consulta-tion paper next month seeks views on precisely how to introduce the measure, favours introducing legislation to give Natural England powers to create the new access, perhaps through the forthcoming Marine Bill.

Such a law would be enthusiastically backed by traditionalist Labour MPs, who have seen Mr Miliband as too much of a Blairite. The right to roam has been symbolic for the left since the birth of the Labour Party.

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