Cycle Sheffield is affiliated to the The Peak District Green Lane Association [PDGLA]
It costs us £15 pa. Their aim is to restrict the use of motor vehicles off-road in the Peak District (http://pdgla.org.uk/)
We recently received a request to help with their work lobbying for a bill that will close green lanes to motor vehicles.
The exec discussed this and we have sent a CycleSheffield donation of £100 – as a one off – to this fund.
This is equivalent to 25p per CycleSheffield member.
Their letter of explanation is below and you may wish to donate yourself or pass the letter on to those who would donate.
This item will be on the agenda of our next meeting Mon Apr 7.
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Campaign Fund
Dear PDGLA members.
We are currently working hard with our sister organisations to try and get the Deregulation Bill which is currently going through Parliament amended to add new rights of way clauses which, if adopted, would close over 3,000 miles of green lanes to motor vehicles. It will do so by classifying them all as Restricted Byways. (Restricted Byways can be used by walkers, horse riders, cyclists and horse-drawn vehicles but not by motor vehicles.)
As part of this effort we need to do some media work to help raise the profile of the green lanes issue among MPs and Lords. The media work will also provide a necessary backdrop to efforts, if we get as far as a vote in the Commons, to calling on people to write to/email their MPs. There will also be some printing or photocopying costs involved in lobbying within Parliament.
To support this work we need to raise about £5k to pay for a professional PR/media manager to work for us for a number of weeks. The Yorkshire Dales Green Lanes Alliance is contributing £2k and the Friends of the Ridgeway £500. PDGLA is putting in £1k, but we need to raise more money. If you can help with a donation, even if quite modest, please send a cheque made out to PDGLA to: Treasurer, PDGLA, PO Box 7976, Great Longstone, DE45 9AY.
Even if we don’t succeed via the Bill, we will have pushed green lanes higher up the political agenda. As a result of our efforts during the draft stage of the Bill we have already succeeded in getting the government to commit to consultation on the issue and MPs of all parties are increasingly aware of the issue due to our current lobbying efforts. Things are definitely moving in the right direction.
Please help if you can. This is a rare opportunity to try and change the law on offroading.
Please forward this email to friends and contacts you think might want to help.
Best wishes, thank you for your continuing support and interest, and my apologies to personal friends and contacts among our membership who have already had a similar message from me already.
Patricia Stubbs
Chair PDGLA
