This is a guest post by Lewis Winks; Guy Shrubsole inputted to the research.

The government has promised ‘9 new river walks’ in England to extend public access to the countryside, but hasn’t released details of where these will be, nor how they propose to achieve this. Without a rights-based approach, achieving meaningful river access will face significant challenges, and is illustrative of wider issues resulting from a reliance on a permissive approach to countryside access.

To understand this better, we mapped ownership of our local river, the River Dart in Devon, making use of local knowledge, site visits, angling maps, Section 31 Deposits, Companies House records, and a handful of gaps backfilled with Land Registry data. We believe this is the first river in England and Wales to have riparian ownership fully mapped (do correct us if we’re wrong!). The Guardian has covered the research in a story out today.

We can now reveal:

• There are 108 separate riparian landowners from source to sea.
• A quarter of the riverbank is owned by aristocratic estates and new money elites.
• 10% is owned by 34 corporations.
• 7% is owned by farms, and 13% by individuals.
• 38% of riverbank is registered to addresses outside of the catchment.
• 18.7km is owned via offshore companies.

Here’s our map of who owns the River Dart (also click here to open the map in a separate tab):

Largest Dart landowners by riverside / bank ownership

Location	Owner	Category	Hectares owned in catchment	Frontage (km)
Dartmoor Estate	Duchy of Cornwall	Crown	27,221	45.3
Spitchwick Estate	Castle Management Trust (Gibraltar Registered)	Aristocracy / Gentry	1,620	19.0
Multiple Sites	National Trust	NGO / Charity	1,047	11.2
Multiple Sites	Forestry Commission	Government	1,427	9.3
South Devon Railway	South Devon Railway Trust	Corporate	34	7.0
Raleigh Estate	Sir John Edward Victor Rose	New Money	430	5.5
Sharpham	The Sharpham Trust	NGO / Charity	226	5.4
Dartington Hall Estate	The Dartinton Hall Trust	NGO / Charity	495	4.5
Multiple Sites	Dartmoor National Park Authority	Government	679	3.6
Totnes	South Hams District Council	Government	20	3.4
Buckfast	Buckfast Abbey	Church	157	3.2
Buckfast to Totnes	Dart Valley Railway PLC	Corporate	25	3.1
Staverton Estate	Church Commissioners for England	Church	586	2.9
Multiple Sites	South West Water	Corporate	35	2.7
Higher Weston Farm	Ian James Widdecombe	Farm	101	2.4
Hood-Barton Estate	David L C White & Hilary White	New Money	97	2.2
Berry Pomeroy Estate	19th Duke of Somerset	Aristocracy / Gentry	1,150	2.0
Dartmouth	Dartmouth Town Council	Government	8	1.9
Old Vicarage Farm	Old Vicarage Farm	Farm	49	1.8

Ownership of land adjacent to River Dart, South Devon by Category

Category (all)	count	ha (within 500m)	ha %	frontage (km)	frontage (%)
Crown	1	1,849	29%	42.97	28%
Gov’t	8	685	11%	15.80	10%
New Money	10	653	10%	16.06	10%
Individual	20	276	4%	10.26	7%
NGO / Charity	12	919	14%	19.65	13%
Farm	18	542	8%	11.08	7%
Church	3	273	4%	4.68	3%
Corporate	34	328	5%	15.50	10%
Aristocracy / Gentry	2	957	15%	19.51	13%
TOTALS	108	6,483		155.52
Absentee owners only (outside of catchment)	count	ha (within 500m)	% of all ha ownership (within 500m)	frontage (km)	% of all frontage ownership
Domestic	36	1,565	24%	36.32	23%
Offshore	2	880	14%	18.76	12%
TOTALS	38	2,445	38%	55.08	35%

When ownership is this fragmented, securing permissive public access is likely to be a logistical nightmare. Each stretch would require time-consuming negotiations with dozens – if not hundreds – of individual landowners and corporate bodies, many of whom are difficult to identify or are based outside of the river catchment. The River Dart is just one example – but the situation along other, longer rivers is likely to be even more complex.

That’s why we’re calling for a rights-based approach to river access – similar to the system in Scotland, where the public has the right to responsibly walk, swim, paddle and canoe along most rivers and lochs, with sensible exceptions.

In England, our rivers are under pressure from pollution and are too often cut off from public connection. Community groups like Friends of the River Dart are working hard to protect and restore rivers, despite limited access and unclear ownership. We hope this mapping will support their efforts, inspire others to investigate who owns their local rivers, and present the case that meaningful access must be based on rights – not on tenuous and piecemeal negotiation.

Notes:

• The Spitchwick Estate, which own 19km of riverbank, and is owned offshore in Gibraltar, have previously tried to prevent access for swimming at popular swimming spots on Dartmoor (see the Times and Totnes Today).The signs remain up, although the estate also owns River Dart Country Park, which charges visitors for – amongst other things – swimming in the Dart!
• South West Water own nearly 3km of waterfront, which has no public access.
• ‘Frontage’ is classed as landownership by distance along the river in km.