Just to address one point from the long comment above:

>  Use by vehicles, cycles and horses is prohibited and therefore appropriately tagged = No

There is no need to do this on a highway=footway.  Access to all other modes of transport other than foot is implicitly "no".  Arguably it's not "wrong" to add "access=no" but that extra tag literally adds no value on a "footway" and it's a form of tagging that is certainly unusual.