§ Mr. YeoTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what estimate the Government have made of the cost to public funds of implementing their proposals on access to the countryside, including start-up costs and operational costs.[126863]
§ Mr. Mullin[holding answer 19 June 2000]: Placing monetary values on the cost of the Government's proposals for creating a new statutory right of access to open countryside well in advance of such a right coming into force is inevitably subject to a degree of uncertainty. The Government have undertaken a Regulatory Impact Assessment which suggests the additional annual costs to the public sector, for which monetarised values have been derived, to be in the order of £2 million to £3 million a year, with one-off costs of about £6 million.