QR codes to help ramblers learn rules of country life

RAMBLERS are used to looking for signposts on rural walks, but they will soon be tracking down QR codes instead.

The countryside is to be sprinkled with the scannable smartphone codes, which link users to a website or app, to help the public understand field etiquette and where they should and shouldn’t walk, a minister has said.

During an appearance at an event organised by the CPRE, the countryside charity, Victoria Prentis, a minister in the department for environment, food and rural affairs, said the measure would explain farmers’ work and decrease conflict by making sure walkers know how to behave responsibly.

Government-funded schemes would “pay for QR codes on signposts”, she said. These would “explain to the public what is going on in the field … why you should keep a dog on the lead, why you shouldn’t perhaps go in at the moment of lambing,” she added.

The event coincided with calls for better funding for green belt land to prevent property developments on it.

Spending on the green belt “lags behind” the rest of the countryside, the CPRE said, with just over a quarter of green belt agricultural land covered by schemes that reward farmers for ecofriendly measures, compared with 42 per cent nationwide.

Current payments under the EU Common Agricultural Policy are to be replaced by a new environmental scheme, though exactly how much farmers and landowners will be compensated and for what remains unclear.

Crispin Truman, chief executive of the CPRE, said: “History repeatedly shows that when protected countryside is under-appreciated it’s at risk of being lost forever to development.”