Local authority could face legal action after losing historic rights of way documents

Elgan Hearn, local democracy reporter

Historic documents that confirm where public footpaths are on land in Blaenau Gwent may have been destroyed when the Civic Centre in Ebbw Vale was demolished.

The revelation came at a meeting of Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council’s Governance and Audit committee on Monday, November 17, as councillors and independent lay members received a report noting the progress of audit work within the council during the second quarter of 2025/2026.

The papers included an audit report into the: “effectiveness of the internal controls relating to the Rights of Way provision.”

This looked at whether the council was meeting its legal obligations on Rights of Way.

The audit provided “no assurance” and had identified nine weaknesses, with six of these identified as “high risk.”

Independent lay member, Martin Veale said: “The Rights of Way audit is concerning – there are fundamental issues there.

“Do we have confidence that the long list of things that need to be done will be done in a reasonable time frame?”

Natural Environment team manager Gwyn Teague said: “We are dealing with a lot of significant issues, due to the absence of staff and documents that evidences legal processes that have been carried out over a number of years.

“Despite our best efforts we have been unable to locate copies of orders that appear to have been completed.

“That’s not something that’s easy to replicate and our working assumption is when the old office was removed a lot of our legally conclusive documents appear to have been disposed of at that point – we can’t just regenerate those.

“It’s not going to be a quick process but it’s one we’re grappling with.”

Mr Veale asked about worst case scenarios as Rights of Way could “cut across any land” including housing.

Rights of Way

During buying or selling a house or piece of land Mr Veale explained that part of the process would include asking the council whether there are any impediments to the transaction such as Rights of Way

Mr Veale said: “So you’re going to say I don’t know.

“That’s going to cause all sorts of issues for people.

“You said the issue started when the offices were knocked down, that’s a few years ago already, has it created difficulties, and will it continue to do so?

Mr Teague confirmed this and said it will: “continue to do so.”

Mr Teague said: “The solution is for us to republish our definitive map but that’s difficult.”

He gave an example of staff going out to deal with a path obstruction complaint.

Mr Teague said the response they received had been: “They paid money to the council to move the path, and they have evidence of that order.

“We don’t have evidence of that order, so apart from being embarrassing it make life difficult.”

He told the committee that this problem was not “frequent” but it does happen.

Mr Teague explained that the council does have extensive maps – but there are gaps, and that this is because he staff member who kept them updated: “wasn’t replaced when they left.”

He added that the response to questions from people is that the council is giving: “the best information we have.”

Mr Veale added: “Does that mean there’s legal recourse against us if we give inaccurate or out of date information?”

Mr Teague said: “Yes we are exposed if we give inaccurate information.”

He added that errors to the maps had been found when it came to large-scale planning applications for windfarms in the county.

Mr Teague said: “It is difficult as the information does not appear to exist and the legislation is old and requires the information to be held in paper format.”

Follow-up report

A follow-up report to explain how work to rectify the problems is progressing will be received by the committee next year.

At the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020 staff left the Civic Centre and never returned.

The decision to permanently leave and demolish the 1960s Civic Centre in Ebbw Vale was then taken in March 2021.

The building was demolished in 2022 and it is expected that the site will be sold so that houses will be built there in the future.

The General Office (GO) in Ebbw Vale has been effectively the council headquarters since 2020.