Part 12: Miscellaneous Section 236: Open access mapping Effect
A new provision is inserted into CROW regarding when Natural England must carry out reviews following the issue of open access maps, which will change the system from a full review every twenty years and replace it with a selective first review followed by a limited continuous review system. The amendments also make provision for regulations to set out the procedure on a review and makes consequential amendments. This will allow Natural England to undertake proportionate reviews, which will reduce administrative burdens on Government and avoid unnecessary expenditure.
	Subsection (2) creates a new section 9A in CROW. In England, section 9A applies to the map review process in place of the existing section 10, which (as provided in subsection (3) of the new section) only applies in Wales:
Subsection 9A(2) provides that the existing review duty is to be discharged, to the extent that Natural England consider appropriate, before a new unified national deadline of 1st January 2031. This is in place of the current staggered deadlines during 2024 and 2025.
Subsection 9A(3) enables Natural England to carry out further reviews, after the completion of the first review, to the extent permitted by regulations. The intention is for regulations to create a limited continuous review system at that later stage, rather than a full review of the maps being required every twenty years as it is at present.
	Subsection (4) amends CROW section 11:
to enable regulations to make provision about a section 9A review in England, including about the period for representations about it to Natural England and the way in which they may be made;
to enable such regulations to set out an appeals regime: this may optionally be based on (or apply with variations) the Coastal Access objection regime set out in Schedule 1A to the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949; and
to enable such regulations to replicate for the purposes of a mapping review a specific boundary discretion that CROW made available to the original mapping process. This is to ensure that areas depicted as open country on the reviewed maps can relate clearly to visible physical features on the ground, whether the effect is to add or remove land as open country.