not resolvedI'm wondering if you fantastically knowledgeable lot can help me here. We're trying to work out some safer routes to various schools in Dumfries. One of the larger secondary schools is very close to the existing traffic-free route along the river, but divided from it by a busy roundabout and a stretch of hostile road. A reasonable alternative and actually more direct route (currently informally used by a few local cyclists) is through and access road and carpark at the Nithbank, which is a complex of clinics owned by the NHS. We've asked them if they would be willing to make this a formal signposted route to the school but they've said no, because they are planning to sell the site at some point in the future and don't want to establish a right of way
Part of me thinks that we should just be pursuing getting the road sorted out, rather than shovelling kids round through car parks, but that's going to take time and political will (which might be easier to come by if more than a handful of kids cycled to the school in question). The school is keen to see more cycling and walking, as are two local primary schools, so if we could work out a good safe route and lobby for a toucan crossing, we might see some progress using the cut through as a temporary route. So I was wondering what the legal position was in Scotland and whether there was any form of words the NHS could use that would protect themselves from establishing a right of way (assuming Right to Roam hasn't rendered that irrelevant by now). I seem to remember signs in England which imply that certain footpaths aren't rights of way, even though you're currently permitted to use them.
I expect that if we solve that problem for them they will then come up with another reason why schoolkids cant' be encouraged to cycle through their land, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it
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