How the rich cheat you of your right to roam

Many landowners pay less tax for 'opening' their land - but still bar access,

Landowners are taking millions of pounds of taxpayers' money every year to open their homes and estates to the public - and then keeping their doors and gates firmly shut.

Landowners are taking millions of pounds of taxpayers' money every year to open their homes and estates to the public - and then keeping their doors and gates firmly shut.

The "hand-outs" to the wealthy are exemptions from death duties which are given in return for an agreement to give access to the public. The scheme costs more than £40m a year, but some of the beneficiaries are taking advantage of a confidentiality clause and keeping the "access-for-tax" deal a secret. Two beneficiaries who are known in the past to have done so are former Conservative minister Nicholas Soames and the Duke of Somerset.

A minister, responding to questions about the little-known scheme put to him by the Independent on Sunday, said that the deals were such cosy arrangements that even officials had "no idea" who benefited. He said: "It is a perk which people should not have. They are effectively conning the public and cheating the tax man by pretending to offer rights of access."

Now, after pressure from the Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, the Inland Revenue is planning to break its principle of confidentiality. It will "name and shame" all landowners who accept tax relief but then renege on the access part of the deal. For the first time, members of the public will know which parts of private Britain they are officially entitled to visit by reading pages on the Inland Revenue website. The tax office has also threatened to reclaim the unpaid tax from any estate which does not keep its side of the bargain.

The system, called the "cultural exemption scheme", was introduced under the last Labour government in 1977. In return for tax relief of 40 per cent on death duties, landowners are required to open up their land or homes to the public and advertise the new state of access. The Ramblers' Association has identified 56 estates that have benefited from the scheme, but they believe there are many more that have taken advantage of the anonymity bestowed on them by tax laws.

Many popular locations have embraced the idea, including Blenheim Palace, in Oxfordshire, owned by the Duke of Marlborough, Chatsworth House and grounds near Bakewell, owned by the Duke of Devonshire, and Knebworth House in Hertfordshire, owned by Lord Cobbold.

But others have failed to follow their lead, either refusing to open up their land, only permitting access for the minimum time possible or pointing out that the scheme does not require them to improve access where it already exists. One high-profile case involved Nicholas Soames, the former defence minister, who was forced to pay back £8,000 in tax after he was found to have failed to allow reasonable public access to family heirlooms, including some handed down by his grandfather, Sir Winston Churchill.

Another was the Duke of Somerset, whose residence of Bradley House, in Wiltshire, contains a painting by Raphael and a bed in which Henry VIII and Jane Seymour slept. Even villagers in nearby Maiden Bradley had no idea the house and grounds were supposed to be open to the public.

The Duke was forced to rethink his approach after a Dispatches documentary for Channel Four in 1997 alerted the wider public to the situation when the comedian Mark Thomas launched a balloon emblazoned with the telephone number of the duke's estate office.

Ian St John, footpaths officer for the Ramblers' Association, said a change in the rules was well overdue. "It has been a scandal," he said. "I'm just flabbergasted that these people can be given this money and yet we aren't allowed to know who they are. It stinks that they are not even opening up their land."

The decision to publicise the "access-for-tax" deal illustrates how the reluctance of landowners to grant access to the public, highlighted by the Independent on Sunday's Out-of-Bounds-Britain campaign, is coming under increasing scrutiny.

Last week, in a major victory for walkers, the Government published its Countryside Bill setting out the new "right to roam" - access to four million acres of mountain, moorland and common.

Apart from opening one ninth of the British countryside, the Bill will also modernise rights of way laws and introduce a new offence of "reckless disturbance" aimed at mainly curbing the menace of scrambler motorbikes.

However, none of this will apply to the privately owned lands covered by the tax relief scheme.