Part 9 of the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 aims to improve public access to, and enjoyment of, the English coastline by creating clear and consistent public rights along the English coast for open-air recreation on foot. It allows existing coastal access to be secured and improved and new access to be created in coastal places where it did not already exist.
This project was commissioned by Natural England to design an evaluation framework to evaluate the impacts of these improvements in coastal access delivered by the England Coast Path Programme, and subsequently to develop a baseline assessment as the first step of implementing that framework.
This commissioned report consists of two volumes:
Volume 1: Baseline Assessment – this presents the result of the baseline assessment of the Programme’s usage and benefits carried out during 2017 and 2018.
Volume 2: Design and Methods – this introduces the overall evaluation design and details the specific methodologies used therein.