WALKING is big business generating income of more than £6bn nationally every year.

But neglect of the footpath network could jeopardise this, the Ramblers Association has said.

A report by Dr Mike Christie at the University of Wales Aberystwyth and independent research consultant Jon Matthews, showed that over 527m walking trips are made to the English countryside each year.

This had a huge impact on rural employment, with an estimated 185,000 to 254,000 full-time jobs being supported by walking.

Walking is a draw for overseas visitors too. They make over one million trips to walk in the English countryside yearly, boosting the rural economy by £355m.

A regional breakdown of spending on walking shows that in Yorkshire, domestic tourists spend £196m on short walks, £83m on long walks, hikers or hillwalkers spend £25m, ramblers £29m and others £34m - a total of £279 m.

The report concludes: "Walkers encountering an obstructed path are unlikely to return to that path. A number of similar experiences may lead walkers to avoid a particular area in the future.'

Commissioned by the RA, the largest charity in Britain working on behalf of walkers, the report found the total benefits from walking are greatly in excess of the cost of bringing the path network to an acceptable standard.

An investment of £69.1m - a fraction of the amount spent by walkers, is all that is needed to bring paths up to scratch, the association claims.

Despite of the number of jobs created by the walking industry, there are 178,000 obstacles on the rights of way network. This is due to barbed wire, ploughing and cropping of paths, dangerous or missing stiles, gates and signposts.

Jacquetta Fewster, head of footpath campaigns at the association, said: "This research confirms what we suspect. The public helps sustain rural communities simply by going for a walk and local authorities are failing the public by under-funding rights of way. It's shocking that paths are still in such an appalling state when it would take as little as £1.79 per adult to get the network open and easy to use."