Research team

Kevin Gaston – University of Exeter

James Lowe – University of Exeter

Gavin Stark – Natural England

Partners

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Aims

Natural England’s Coastal Access Programme aims to increase and improve public access to England’s coastline. It is constructing the King Charles III England Coast Path, a walking route around England’s coast that is being identified and implemented in specific stretches. The aim is to enable visitors to access and travel along the coastline, enjoying the environment, scenery and leisure opportunities. However, providing space and opportunities for recreation alongside other land uses (such as nature conservation) can be challenging.  

To protect sensitive areas while still ensuring that visitors have access to and enjoyment of the coast, Natural England has identified appropriate routes along the coastline and ways to help guide visitors along them. This Theme 1 project aims to understand how visitors interact with the Coast Path as it has been designed and laid out, and therefore evaluate whether the design of the route by Natural England and land managers is successfully safeguarding land uses – such as the protection of wild bird populations – without unduly restricting visitor access and enjoyment. 

The project is being funded by and conducted in collaboration with Natural England. 

Above: “The aim is to enable visitors to access and travel along the coastline, enjoying the environment, scenery and leisure opportunities.” Images: Ian Branch – Unsplash

Approach

We are using multiple different methods to evaluate the interventions Natural England and other land managers are putting in place to balance improved access with protecting wildlife. The first, running in three periods (February-March 2024, summer 2024 and winter 2024/25), is a survey that has been designed and tested by the research team. In February-March 2024, it is being conducted by consultants Footprint Ecology, who are surveying visitors in key locations on six stretches of the Coast Path: 

• Castletown Estate, Cumbria  
• Fenham Flats, Northumberland 
• Holehaven Creek, Essex  
• Pagham Harbour, West Sussex 
• Ross Back Sands, Northumberland 
• Wallasea Island, Essex 
  

In addition to the survey, we will conduct more extensive interviews with land owners and managers, as well as other people directly involved in shaping the proposals for the stretches of Coast Path we are investigating, in implementing the planned interventions, and in maintaining them. We are also planning more in-depth interactions with visitors to Coast Path locations, known as ‘accompanied walks’ or ‘go-along interviews’. These will allow us to explore how visitors engage with the Coast Path environments. 

We seek to augment the rich qualitative and quantitative data collected using these methods by identifying and assessing additional digital data sources that help us to develop our insights into where visitors travel in Coast Path sites. 

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“The future impact of this project will inform the design and implementation of interventions at coastal sites to benefit local biodiversity.”

James Lowe – University of Exeter

Next Steps

The findings of this work will be published here. The insights we glean from the project will feed directly into Natural England’s Coastal Access Programme, informing the design and implementation of new interventions as well as potentially amending existing arrangements. We also anticipate the findings being of wider interest to stakeholders involved in managing pressures from recreational activities in sensitive environments.