In reply to DTE:
She wasn't. I (incidentally, I don't know her or have any brief for her, but I am a hill farmer and I understand the SSSI bureacracy). My understanding is that she was prosecuted for breaching her SSSI conditions. These conditions are called Operations Likely to Damage (OLDs). There can be zillions of them, imposed at will by the quangocrats; there are so many that you might not even know which ones apply to which field. And event he, interpretations can vary according to individual quangocrats. The fact is that OLDs are probably being breached (inadvertantly or otherwise) across the country on a daily basis.
In this instance, as far as I can tell, she applied manure to a field without gaining prior approval, and thus breached an OLD which specifies that no form of fertiliser be applied without approval from EN. This breach of an OLD allowed the Ramblers to crow (9!) about "damage". Defra, no doubt under PC pressure from the usual suspects, then took the unusual step of pressing a prosecution - followed by the even more unusual step of issuing a pres release to gloat about its good work.
(Interestingly, if a trespassing rambler crapped in the same field, that too could technicaly be a breach of the very same OLD...!)
As far as I can see, there I no evidence whatsover that the land has actually been "improved" in terms of vegetative cover by this single breach. (As a matter of interest, some of my management agreement with EN actually specifiies the use of manure as opposed to soluble nitrogen-based fertiliser; I tend to avoid the latter anyway for all sorts of ecological reasons). Indeed, did this breach of OLD even relate to Field Seven, the portion of land at the heart of this row? Or was it somewhwere else on the farm? Who said she was trying to use "improvement" to avoid access land classification - the Ramblers? Perhaps somebody could tell us.
The point about soluble nitrogen-based fert is that it tends to accelerate growth of certain grasses - notably perennial rye grass. A preponderance of ryegrass in the sward tends to be count as "improvement" in farming terminiology.
But without rotavating and re-seeding, the alteration of existing sward composition towards ryegrass through fertilizing takes many, many growing seasons. And if you stop, it tends to revert.
Yet the current owner has only had the land for what - three years? The fact is that the ground cover at the time when the CA mapped the area had been achieved by the grazing/managment reime over many decades, if not longer. Indeed, they probably mapped the area before an breach of OLD - perhaps before she even owned it!
In some instances, the historical use of solble nitrogen fert can be cited as evidence of management for improvement in relation to CROW, but that wasn't the case here. In this instance, the decision was made on the basis of vergetative cover.
Reading the inspector's report, it becomes obvious that the BMC itself cocked-up. Its own ecological survey conflicted with that carried out by the RA, which musty have cast doubt on the access lobby's case. More importantly, it was deemed to be unreliable because it got the boundaries wrong, thereby making a nonsense of the data. As for the RA survey, that showed unimproved cover (ie qualifying for MMHD) over just 55.2% of the field in question. And that wrongly included an area of scattered hawthorn on improved or semi-improved grasland (ISIG).
Now, whatever the true extent of appropriate cover, the inspector's own ecologist thought the balance between MMHD and ISIG was probably just 5 %. Definitely not "wholly" MMH, therefore, and arguably not "predominantly" either. Hence it cannot be classified as access land.
I gather that a precise definition of "predominantly" is yet to be clarified, but to date had been held to be between two thirds (66.6%) and three quarters (75 %). So even accepting the RA survey at face value (and the inspector doesn't) Field 7 still fails to reach the "predmoninantly" MMHD qualification by a long way.