On The Right Path

A Tynwald Day petitioner has thanked an MHK for her work in ensuring the island’s footpaths will be properly maintained going forward.

The culmination of over a year of work, the commitment began life as a Tynwald Day petition from Butch Buttery.

Douglas South MHK Sarah Maltby chaired the committee, which also included Garff MHK Daphne Caine and Bill Henderson MLC, that delivered its recommendations to Tynwald to improve the island’s footpaths after years of neglect.

The first recommendation reflected the lack of investment in what is not only good for locals, but part of the island’s tourist offering, is that there ‘should be adequate investment in maintaining the Public Rights of Way network and Government-owned public paths’.

During the committee’s evidence sessions, Director of Highway Services Jeff Robinson said that t ‘no work had been done on [updating the Definitive Map] for probably 30 years’. Something the committee said was a ‘serious failure’.

This led the committee to making its second recommendation that the DoI return to Tynwald with a report detailing how it intends to address the backlog of changes that need to be made to rectify this.

The third recommendation, reflecting the need for improvements across the gov, calls on CoMin to establish a working party that would develop a ‘viable and fully costed strategy for proactively maintaining and developing the island’s Public Rights of Way and Government-owned public paths’.

Reacting to Tywald giving its backing to the report, Mrs Maltby said: ‘Our report and recommendations were agreed unanimously by Government and by Tynwald! It is unusual for a new MHK to pick up a petition, call for and then successfully Chair a Select Committee and produce a report and recommendations within a year but that’s what has happened!

‘Thanks must go to my fellow committee members Daphne Caine and Mr Bill Henderson MLC for their guidance and support. As a ‘first timer’ it has been a huge piece of work but they have been a great help. The Tynwald Clerks and researches were invaluable and we really are lucky to have such a good resource to call on to successfully accomplish the committee work.’

The Douglas South MHK also thanked Butch for instigating the work with his Tynwald Day petition. He said: ‘A massive thank you to Sarah Maltby and the committee for all the hard work put into getting this result. My preference would have been for DEFA to take over responsibility for the entire network as the DOI had done such a shoddy job on maintenance, but maybe now with some proper funding we can get the paths into good order.’