Our new activist in Gloucestershire
We have appointed Chas Townley as our local correspondent for Stroud District in Gloucestershire. Chas lives in Stroud and is a retired social-housing manager and former Stroud District and Town councillor. He has been working on the registration of unrecorded rights of ways in Stroud and surrounding parishes. As a result, 27 applications have been…
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Land registered as common at Teneriffe in Cornwall
We celebrate the decision by the Planning Inspectorate to grant our application to register two small pieces of land (0.146 hectare) situated two miles south of Mullion in Cornwall. The land was provisionally registered as common land under the Commons Registration Act 1965, but late in the day the applicant withdrew the application and the…
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We help to protect Hamsterley green, County Durham
We have welcomed a decision which will help protect Hamsterley village green, VG45, six miles west of Bishop Auckland in County Durham. Hamsterley Parish Council had applied to the environment secretary for permission to deregister part of the green, which includes a ribbon of green verge along Saunders Avenue, to facilitate access to a new…
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Works compound rejected on Chobham Common, Surrey
We have welcomed the decision of an inspector to refuse consent for a new works-compound on Chobham Common in Surrey. The works were proposed by Sunningdale golf club, for which an application for consent was made under section 38 of the Commons Act 2006. Sunningdale new course lies largely on Chobham Common, whereas the old…
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Reopening of blocked footpath in Cornwall follows threat of legal action
Following a threat of legal action, a landowner has removed crops which were obstructing the route of a public footpath at St Ervan, three miles south-west of Padstow in Cornwall. The landowner is a St Ervan parish councillor. Cornwall Council, the highway authority, had failed in its legal duty to ensure the path remained unobstructed,…
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Hertfordshire paths-champion wins our prestigious Eversley Award
Mr Chris Beney of Bushey in Hertfordshire is the second-ever winner of the Open Spaces Society’s rarely-presented Eversley Award for Outstanding Personal Endeavour. The award is named after Lord Eversley, the distinguished founder of the society in 1865, and for many years its president and chairman. It is presented occasionally by the trustees to people…
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Our latest local correspondents’ conference
Fourteen of our local correspondents (about one third) gathered, with our chairman Phil Wadey and five members of staff, at Hillscourt conference centre, on the edge of the Lickey Hills near Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, for a two-day event. It was an opportunity for us to update each other on the law and guidance, and to…
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Common land saved at Bracelet Bay beauty-spot, Swansea
We are pleased that Swansea City and County Council has withdrawn its application to deregister [1] common land at Tutts Head, Bracelet Bay, Mumbles. This is a popular beauty-spot, and deregistration would have made the land vulnerable to development. The council had applied to itself to deregister the land on the basis that the land…
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Now is the time to give public access a leg up
‘The new agricultural-payment regimes in England and Wales provide a perfect opportunity for farmers and landowners to give public access a leg up.’ So declared our chairman, Phil Wadey, in his keynote speech to the society’s annual general meeting in London today (7 July). ‘The Westminster government and the Wales Senedd have agreed that farmers…
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Café on Bristol’s Downs
We are dismayed that councillors in Bristol have approved plans for a café on the city’s glorious downs, close to the Avon Gorge. We have called for radical reform of the nineteenth-century Downs Committee, which put forward the plans. Bristol’s iconic sea-walls are a wholly inappropriate site for a café. It will spoil the view…
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