Thank you all for continuing to support us and share our petition.

Not much in the way of updates. The council continue to stall on their promise to arrange a meeting between our group, Natural England and themselves and after 3 weeks have still failed to provide the evidence they claim to have that supports the decision not to consider allowing horse riding in the woods. They fail to even answer the most simple yes/ no question of "Is the purpose of the proposed meeting to ask Natural England to consider ways to allow horse riding to take place"

It really is unbelievable!

But in the meantime we continue to gather our own evidence and the latest comes in the form of a freedom of information request. 

So, did you know that between 2016 and when the barriers went up in February 2023 there have been 12 complaints relating to activities in and around the site in question... and not one of those relates to horse riding. In fact all of them relate to motorbikes... got that from the FOI request

Natural England visited the site in Nov 2022 to discuss the woodland management plan and no horse-riding concerns were raised (Got that from the FOI request) and we have been quite open about the fact that we were riding in the woods right up until the barriers were installed in February. 

Yet, despite this distinct lack of concern and no evidence of public complaints, council officials made a request to Natural England to visit the site in June 2023 due to 'concerns about horse-riding activities taking place' in the woods. (yep, got that from the FOI request too) 

Don't know about you, but all this wasted time and effort blocking access just doesn't seem to be in the public effort... and isn't that what these elected officials and the staff in office supposed to be working towards.

Please keep sharing the petition. We are also really interested to hear from anyone who has been unable to access the woods since the barriers went up (Families with buggies, wheelchair users) as the council view on removing their access is at best unsympathetic and at worse active discrimination.