Trail Riders' Fellowship & Anor, R (on the application of) v Dorset County Council

An application to modify a definitive map under section 53(5) of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 must comply strictly with paragraph 1 of Schedule 14, subject only to genuinely minor departures. A map enlarged from a 1:50,000 source remains an enlarged 1:50,000 map, even if printed at 1:25,000. It is not a map drawn to the prescribed 1:25,000 scale. The de minimis principle does not cure that substantive failure, particularly where the difference in scale affects the physical detail needed to identify the claimed route and surrounding features.

The claimants challenged Dorset County Council’s refusal of five applications under section 53(5) of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. The applications sought modification of the definitive map and statement to record routes as byways open to all traffic. The applications were made before 20 January 2005 and were intended to preserve unrecorded vehicular rights under section 67 of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006.

Each application was accompanied by a computer-generated map derived from 1:50,000 digital raster mapping and printed at approximately 1:25,000. The central issues were whether those maps complied with paragraph 1 of Schedule 14 and, if not, whether the departure was de minimis.

1. The claim failed. The five applications did not comply strictly with paragraph 1 of Schedule 14 to the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.

2. The statutory requirement was directed to the map accompanying the application. The maps supplied were enlarged images derived from 1:50,000 Ordnance Survey raster mapping. Printing them at a larger scale did not transform them into 1:25,000 maps. The source map’s content and appearance remained those of the 1:50,000 product, with materially less detail and different conventions from a genuine 1:25,000 map.

3. The prescribed scale had a practical purpose. It enabled the surveying authority to identify the claimed route with sufficient physical detail, including boundaries, tracks and other features relevant to the route. The requirement therefore concerned more than the numerical relationship between a measurement on paper and a measurement on the ground.

4. The court applied the approach in R (on the application of Warden and Fellows of Winchester College) v Hampshire County Council [2008] EWCA Civ 431, under which strict compliance is required but minor departures may be saved by the de minimis principle. The examples in Maroudas v Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs [2010] EWCA Civ 280 concerned minor defects capable of correction and did not assist the claimants.

5. The departure here was substantive. A 1:50,000 map was materially different from a 1:25,000 map, and the need to assess each enlarged map individually would create expense and uncertainty. The de minimis principle therefore had no application. The claim was dismissed.