Update 14: Our initial guiding principles

Last month we asked what principles should guide Good Ways. Thank you to everyone who commented and completed the survey. You gave us a lot to think about!

Some themes came through particularly strongly.

Good Ways should be for everyone, recognising diversity as normal rather than something to accommodate afterwards. Routes should be described clearly enough for people to make their own decisions about what works for them.

Good Ways should do what it can to help people care for themselves, each other, places and nature. That includes healthier and happier journeys, respect for other people and landscapes, and – where possible – leaving things a little better than we found them.

And Good Ways should be built on shared knowledge and trust. You told us to keep things simple, open and transparent; to respect privacy; to share information responsibly; and to make it easy for people to contribute, challenge, correct and improve what we know.

One comment particularly sharpened our thinking about accessibility: “If diversity is the norm then that is the starting place for all thinking and all design.” Elsewhere, “Leave it better” neatly captured much of what people told us about our relationship with places and nature.

We also heard an important point: principles should be useful rather than perfect. They need to guide real decisions, and be able to change as we learn.

From all of this we have drafted three working principles:

• Good Ways for Everyone – We help people find routes they can enjoy, understand what to expect and choose what works for them.
• Good Ways for People, Places and Nature – We care for ourselves, each other, nature and the places around us. Where we can, we use our journey to makes things better.
• Good Ways for Shared Knowledge and Trust – We are collaborative, use good design, share knowledge openly and keep learning. We respect people’s rights and privacy, and are clear about how decisions are made.

These are working principles, not finished ones, but we will start using them to go deeper.

Our next job is to develop a set of Good Ways commitments underneath them: what Good Ways will commit to doing for everyone who uses it, and what we ask from people in return. Many of your more specific suggestions – around accessibility, privacy, open technology, environmental care, sharing knowledge and how we use routes – will find a home there.

We’ll share those commitments for comment too.

In the meantime, what do you think of these three principles? What would you change, add or take away?