Public Access Strategy - Costs & Resources Indicative Total Costs

A range of costs based on the methods developed during the Local Authority Pilot Project are outlined below for the planning, establishment and maintenance of a core path network in North Lanarkshire. It should be emphasised that the true costs of implementing the strategy can only be calculated once more detailed route networks have been defined at community level.

Planning the Core Path Network

If the core path network were to be planned using participative exercises within each of the ten access strategy action areas, we estimate that as many as 400 access officer days would be required. In addition, as much as £13,000 in expenses may be required to cover the costs of accommodation and materials for consultation exercises. This equates to an allowance of £1300 and 40 access officer days per action area.

The cost of establishing a core path network is seen as a one-off capital cost. In reality it is likely to phased over a number of years, but it can be calculated as a unit sum of money. For the purposes of this estimation, two broad figures for the establishment of a core path network were calculated. Firstly, an estimate of the cost of turning all the existing routes in North Lanarkshire (as shown in Figure A1) into a core path network was calculated. Secondly, an estimate was made which added a further 10% of new route construction to the existing routes.

The costs of establishing the core path network incorporate the following elements:

A number of important assumptions have been made to make calculations simple:

The total length of the existing routes in North Lanarkshire is roughly 430km. If these routes were established as North Lanarkshire's core path network, the estimated cost would be around £520,000.

If an additional distance of new routes equal to 10% of the existing routes were constructed to enhance the existing route network, this would add 43km of new routes to the figure above. The cost of constructing these new routes would be around £963,000. The total establishment cost of North Lanarkshire's existing routes plus 10% new routes would therefore be around £1,500,000. Whilst this may appear large, it amounts to around £4.68 per head of population in North Lanarkshire.

It is important to note that the estimates were based on an assumption of 1m wide paths. Many routes will in fact be wider. The costs associated with the re-grading and new route construction could be significantly higher if the paths were wider than 1m. For example, if the average width of routes was actually 1.5m, then the two establishment costs outlined above of £520,000 and £1,500,000 would rise to approximately £750,000 and £2,200,000 respectively.

In the past, maintenance of paths has been carried out on an ad hoc basis by local authorities. The requirement to maintain core path networks to a reasonable standard will mean that far greater levels of maintenance over longer distances of path will be needed than has previously been the case.

The ongoing costs of maintaining paths are often calculated as a yearly percentage of the capital costs of constructing those paths. A number of operations and regimes may be included under this heading. Basic path maintenance including route repairs, vegetation management, leaf and litter clearing, drain clearance and regular route monitoring have been costed at 2.5% of the capital establishment costs per year.

Basic yearly maintenance figures (at 2.5%) for established networks are shown in table 7.1 below. They correspond to the four potential establishment costs estimated earlier. It should be noted that as most of the routes of any core path network will already exist, the 'nominal construction cost' is calculated in order to estimate likely maintenance requirements. This nominal construction cost is simply an estimate of what it might cost to construct the existing routes from new as well as the new route proposals. The resultant figure is therefore much higher than the actual establishment cost of the core path network.

Table 7.1
Network Description	Establishment Cost	Nominal Construction Cost	Yearly Maintenance Cost (2.5%)
Existing routes only (average 1m wide)	£520,000	£9,600,000	£240,000
Existing routes + 10% new route construction (average 1m wide)	£1,500,000	£10,600,000	£265,000
Existing routes only (average 1.5m wide)	£750,000	£14,500,000	£362,500
Existing routes + 10% new route construction (average 1.5m wide)	£2,200,000	£16,000,000	£400,000

In addition to these general maintenance tasks, it is likely that over say a ten-year period, many of the routes within the core path network would require to be re-surfaced or re-graded. If all of the core path network's routes were to need re-grading or re-surfacing at some point during a ten year spell, the cost of this would amount to 50% of the capital costs over that period. Split evenly between the ten years, this would come to 5% per year. However, in practice this would be required unevenly over the ten-year period so that perhaps 20% would be required on each of two different years, and 10% on another. This type of maintenance has often been categorised as a capital expenditure in the past but should be seen as an ongoing requirement for well-managed paths.

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