A PUBLIC inquiry into a five-year legal wrangle over a public foot path at Warrington is to be held on September 28
Arguments over the history of Old Camp Road, near the Gulliver’s World theme park at Callands will be put to a planning inspector..
If the inspector is persuaded it is a public footpath he will confirm an order designating the route as such.
If not, he will refuse to confirm it.
Coun Judith Wheeler, who represents the Whittle Hall area, said: “This is the last opportunity users of this footpath will have to keep it open in the form it is now.
“It is important they come forward at the inquiry.
Objectors – including Gulliver’s World – provided new evidence earlier in the year but the inspector now wishes to hear user-evidence.
Old Camp Road originally provided access to the US air base at Burtonwood.
But local residents claim it was been used by the public since around 1959.
The section of the route residents want designated a public right-of-way runs from Sankey Valley Park to Cromwell Avenue.
Evidence considered by the borough council when it first put forward proposals to designate the route as a public right-of-way included an aerial photograph believed to date from 1983, archive highway documents relating to nearby housing developments and the construction of Cromwell Avenue, attempts by land agents to prevent public use of the road, including police action to turn back cylists and motor cyclists, barricades being erected and broken down, etc.
Users claim to have used the route shortly after the air base closed in 1959.
The Ministry of Defence sold the land to the 7th Baron Lilford in 1962.
It passed into the ownership of Warrington Development Corporation in 1974.
Outline planning consent for Gulliver’s World was granted in 1985 and the theme park opened four years later.
The theme part operators have claimed that over the years a number of notices prohibiting use of the route were erected, together with barricades. But these were often torn down – possibly by local people who felt strongly that it was a public right-of-way.
