Tim Budd of Buxton in Derbyshire tells of his long struggle to register part of Fairfield Common as a green, with help from the society.
Photo: Tim Budd

In September 2000 High Peak Borough Council (HPBC) published an amendment to its local plan for Buxton. This changed the means of access to a proposed new development of 330 houses, from a signal-controlled junction to a roundabout. The roundabout would be 60 metres across and sited in the middle of Fairfield Common, much-loved open land on the edge of Buxton.

For those in favour of the development, this change was to be pushed through as ‘a matter of detail’. But the impact on the open space was more than local people could tolerate. The roundabout was the catalyst for strenuous objections to the entire development.

Opposition
When, despite strong local opposition, the development received planning permission, that seemed to be the end of the matter. However, nearby Hogshaw Wood had recently been protected from development by registration as a town green, a success which prompted me to make a similar application for Fairfield Common.

I applied in December 2000, ignorant of the law of greens and the amount of time and effort which would be required to complete the process. Fortunately, the OSS was able to help me. My first indication of the complexities came a couple of months later, when I received copies of objections from four bodies, including HPBC and two firms of developers. These objections ran to over 150 pages and were written in that arcane form of English used by solicitors.

Once I was over the initial shock, two things occurred to me.

First, if it was necessary for the objectors to work so hard to fight their corner I might well have a case. That gave me the motivation to go through the documents carefully, and to discover that a large percentage of their content was nonsense.

Lawful sports & pastimes on Fairfield Common             Photo: Tim Budd

Tactic
I have subsequently learned that throwing a large volume of paperwork at applicants, in the hope that it will deter them from pursuing their applications, is a common tactic among developers.

The second point which struck me was that, although the objectors knew a great deal about the ownership of the land (which had been common but was not registered under the 1965 Commons Registration Act, and which had been subsequently acquired by the council from the Public Trustee), they knew little about its day-to-day use.

There was much discussion in their evidence about whether people ‘would’ use the land to play games, or could ‘reasonably be expected’ to fly kites there and so forth. As the front of my house looked over the application site, I knew what it was used for, and that several of the objections relating to use were founded on ignorance. I rebutted the objections.

Derbyshire County Council, the registration authority, then sought external legal advice and turned to barrister Philip Petchey, a well-known name in this field. He drew the conclusion, based on the objectors’ (albeit inconsistent) evidence, that the application should be rejected without holding an inquiry. However he allowed me to respond to his conclusions.

After two further rounds of representations, and almost a year, he acknowledged that the case in favour of registration was strong enough to justify a non-statutory inquiry and advised the registration authority accordingly. At this point the objectors contested his continued involvement because he was a member of the Ramblers’ Association and they considered he might therefore be unable to make an unbiased judgment.

Expert
In his stead, the registration authority invited Charles Mynors, another expert in this area, to conduct a public inquiry. This was held over four days in January 2003. I called 16 witnesses in support of my case: there was no time to hear the evidence of a further 33. The objectors produced seven witnesses including the borough solicitor, the head of planning and the director of environmental services.

A preliminary judgment was issued in May 2003 which recommended rejection of my application, on various grounds.

However Mr Mynors felt that the judgment in R v City of Sunderland ex parte Beresford [2003] UKHL 60 (OS, spring 04 p2), and the other outstanding cases at that time, might be material and he recommended that the registration authority await the Beresford result and schedule a further hearing before determining the application.

Confidence
After the excellent result in Beresford, I was hopeful of at least partial success when the further hearing took place over two days last March. This confidence was finally vindicated when three acres of the common were registered as a green on 27 September 2004, exactly four years after the first exchanges.

But the saga is not over. HPBC is challenging the decision in the High Court. I am confident that the green registration will prevail and will allow local people to continue to enjoy Fairfield Common as they have done without interruption since 1776.