Looking after footpaths takes a lot of quiet organising: which parishes have someone keeping an eye on them, who that person is, which councils to write to, and how it all fits together. NGX now holds that whole picture in one place, in a dedicated volunteer workspace. The clever part is not the screens, but how any Ramblers area can load its own information without NGX needing to know how that area happens to keep it today.
\nThe model came from a real Ramblers area that already runs footpath volunteering at scale, across almost four hundred parishes. That experience shaped what the system holds. It did not shape how the information gets in: every area hands NGX the same couple of simple spreadsheets, never its own private database.
\nEverything reduces to five things and the relationships between them.
\nE04001129), never by name alone. The code is what keeps a parish the same parish across the map and across every area's data. A parish also carries the authority, sector and rights-of-way group it belongs to, and a flag for parishes with no public rights of way so they stay out of the vacancy figures.Everything the system holds comes down to one plain line:
\nflowchart LR\n PERSON@{ icon: "ngx:user", label: "A person", pos: "b", h: 46 }\n ROLE["takes on a role<br/>LFO · PFO · Coordinator"]\n PARISH["for a parish"]\n GROUPING["that sits in a rights-of-way group,<br/>an authority and a sector"]\n COUNCIL["with a council to write to"]\n PERSON --> ROLE --> PARISH --> GROUPING\n PARISH --> COUNCIL\nA person takes on a role — Local Footpath Officer, Parish Footpath Observer or Coordinator — for a parish, which sits inside a rights-of-way group, an authority and a sector, and has a council you write to. Fill that sentence in with real names and places, over and over, and you have the whole system.
\nTake one example: Alice is the Local Footpath Officer for Upper Meadowford. In a spreadsheet that is a single row:
\n| Volunteer | \nRole | \nParish | \nCover | \n
|---|---|---|---|
| Alice Fieldingham | \nLocal Footpath Officer | \nUpper Meadowford | \nPermanent | \n
So setting the system up is really just filling in rows: one for each person, and one for each job someone does.
\nAn area prepares two files. The first lists the people — every volunteer and every council contact, each with their email address. The second describes the structure — the parishes, who looks after what, and the councils to write to. Both are ordinary Excel files with a documented set of columns, so an area can produce them whatever it happens to use today.
\nTwo things always stay the same. Parishes are identified by their official ONS code (like E04001129) rather than by name, so the same parish lines up across the map and across everyone's data. People are identified by their email address, which is how a job in the second file is matched to a person from the first.
You can download both files, filled in with a few example rows in exactly these formats, at the foot of this page. Open them to see the shape, or import them as they are to try the process end to end.
\nLoading an area's data happens in two separate steps, and keeping them separate matters:
\nflowchart TB\n subgraph author["What an area prepares"]\n F1@{ icon: "ngx:file", label: "1 · People", pos: "b", h: 46 }\n F2@{ icon: "ngx:file", label: "2 · Structure", pos: "b", h: 46 }\n end\n FEED@{ icon: "ngx:ramblers-hq", label: "Supporter feed", pos: "b", h: 48 }\n subgraph ngx["NGX Ramblers"]\n MEM@{ icon: "ngx:user", label: "People", pos: "b", h: 48 }\n VOL@{ icon: "ngx:ramblers", label: "Parishes & jobs", pos: "b", h: 48 }\n end\n F1 -->|"load into feed"| FEED\n FEED -->|"sync"| MEM\n F2 -->|"import"| VOL\n MEM -.->|"matched by email"| VOL\n style author fill:#FDF3D8,stroke:#F9B104,stroke-width:2px,rx:12,ry:12,color:#404143\n style ngx fill:#E8F5EE,stroke:#9BC8AB,stroke-width:2px,rx:12,ry:12,color:#404143\nBefore anything is saved, a dry run shows exactly what would change — parishes, matched volunteers, jobs to add, and anyone who needs a second look — without touching a single record. Only when the numbers look right do you apply, and running it again later updates the same records rather than creating duplicates.
\nThe two files describe what every Ramblers area has in common: parishes, people, jobs and councils, not the inside of any one area's system. So an area with an old database, one with a pile of spreadsheets, and one starting from scratch all meet NGX in the same place, and the workspace works the same way for everyone.
\nThe two files below carry a handful of made-up rows in exactly the formats described above. Download them, open them to see the shape, and import them as they are to try the process end to end. The people file goes into the supporter feed; the structure and assignments file goes into the volunteer import.
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