Many county councillors would rather see a cut of more than £200,000 in footpath maintenance leading to staff cuts than call in an outstanding loan of more than £1 million to the Eden Project of which nothing, including interest, has ever been repaid.

Mark Kaczmarek and Graeme Hicks, councillors for Lanner and St Day and Redruth South respectively are furious after it was agreed at the environment and heritage scrutiny committee that £212,000 of cuts affecting public rights of way had to be made.

Mr Kaczmarek said: "This would entail the public path improvement programme being suspended and little or no maintenance being undertaken on over 30 per cent of the public rights of way network. Staffing levels would be reduced by three posts.

"This would equate to more than 500 miles of rights of way not being maintained. Our rights of way networks bring in a vast amount of money to the Cornish economy and are very important to all of us who live here and for tourism. We must continue to invest in our greatest asset, our environment.

"This was also in contradiction to the county council's own recently-published forward plan which highlighted the rights of way and Cornwall's heritage as a top priority."

In a proposal seconded by Mr Graeme Hicks, Mr Kaczmarek proposed that funding should be found to maintain the rights of way by clawing back monies used to support the Eden Project, near St Blazey, and amounting to £360,000 as well as the reinstatement of interest charges on the £1.8 million pound loan that is currently on hold. This money could then be used to support Cornwall's natural environment, said the two councillors.

But Lib-Dem members said Eden was equally important to the Cornish economy, at which point the two independent councillors said the authority should drop the idea of publishing a newspaper and use the money they had put aside for that scheme to fund the rights of way network.

The budget recommendation will now be sent back to the executive member Adam Paynter to look at ways of supporting the rights of way network.

The county council agreed in February last year to make a £360,000 grant to Eden over three years and to freeze the repayment of the principal amount of an outstanding loan only to restart when Eden sees a visitor level of 1.4 million a year.

This week advertisements appeared in the local press for staff to join the council's ever-expanding communications department, which will be responsible for its proposed newspaper. The editor's post carries a salary up to £30,843 while the overall communications manager's post carries a salary to £48,378. Another communications officer is also being recruited to join those already in post and that carries a salary to £26,928.