A looming deadline that could see several miles of pathways and bridleways in Gloucestershire wiped off the map has been kicked into the weeds to 2031.

But conservation bodies fighting to keep public access say a promise to ditch the legislation has been betrayed.

Campaigners celebrated a victory early last year in the battle for public access  when the government agreed to cancel a deadline to register forgotten footpaths.

At the time, walkers and horse riders had been given until January 1st, 2026, to apply to save any rights of way through private land that existed before 1949 but did not appear on current, official maps. After that deadline, anyone seeking access would lose any opportunity to reinstate them.

But after environment secretary Therese Coffey undertook to ditch the 2026 deadline, the minister has now signalled that the change will merely be pushed back to January 1st, 2031.

For Gloucestershire, a 'Rights of Way and Countryside Access Improvement Plan 2011– 2026' from Shire Hall revealed that the county has 2,840 miles of footpaths and 533 miles of bridleways.

And according to The Open Spaces Society (OSS), sections which people now enjoy in the county could disappear.

Condemning Ms Coffey's decision to not revoke the deadline but simply delay it, the society warns public rights over thousands of paths which are public highways but not yet recorded as such, or not yet recorded correctly, will be airbrushed out of existence.

Kate Ashbrook, general secretary of the OSS said: "Public rights over them will then be lost for ever. At a time when outdoor activity has never been more important for our health and well-being, government decides to reduce those opportunities.

Ms Ashbrook, also a member of the stakeholder working group which has been advising government on the rights-of-way reforms, added: "This is a short-sighted and obstructive decision by the secretary of state, and will lead to the loss of thousands of public paths.

"Users of the path network have already spent years researching the historic evidence needed to claim paths; but there is no way that they can research them all before the deadline, and local authorities no longer have the resources to process the applications in a timely manner."

The OSS says it will continue to call for revocation of the "pernicious deadline".

"It flies in the face of winning more and better access in town and country, and of saving our heritage of public paths."

Echoing the OSS's condemnation, the Ramblers Association said paths are a national treasure to cherish and protect.

"We should be improving opportunities for communities to get outdoors and connect with nature, not reducing them.

"The Ramblers currently has more than 600 volunteers working hard to do the research required to save the 41,000 miles of paths that are missing from the map in England. We will continue to submit applications to save these paths, but a deadline of any kind puts unnecessary pressure on under-resourced local authorities.

"We believe there is already a backlog of more than 4,000 applications waiting to be processed and the government has reintroduced a deadline without any plans to address the backlog."

Data from Gloucestershire County Council indicates there are around 14,000 hectares of mapped access land, made up of about 400 identifiable areas and shown on the conclusive map of registered common land and open country held by Natural England.