This Rights of Way Improvement Plan (ROWIP) aims to provide a strategy that helps to target resources towards achieving Darlington’s vision for countryside access. This aim is closely related to the findings of national, regional and local research, which emphasise the importance of a raft of benefits to improved countryside access. These benefits include the value of green exercise to mental and physical health, the importance of having people’s support for action and use of resources to improve the green environment. In addition there is a need to help reverse the process of an increasing gulf between the urban population and the people in the rural areas.
The vision for Darlington’s Rights of Way network is to create a facility that allows all of the public to have sustainable access to quality countryside. Countryside where they may experience the full richness of an unpolluted and biodiverse environment, as well as one that encourages healthy and safe travel.
For more information or to offer comments on the plan, please email countryside@darlington.gov.uk