Our stand against the grandstand
We save common land at Richmond Low Moor, North Yorkshire We have welcomed a court order setting aside the removal of common land from Richmond Low Moor following the society’s legal action. On 21 June 2021, North Yorkshire County Council granted an application by the Richmond Burgage Pastures Committee to deregister common land at the…
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Our justice system undermined
Over the last 157 years, the Open Spaces Society has taken pride in successfully using the courts to rectify wrongs affecting commons, greens, other open spaces, and public paths. We also back our members in their legal actions. Now, the Westminster government’s Judicial Review and Courts Bill is set to have a profoundly detrimental effect…
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Parks for ever
Simon Hunt, one of our trustees and the former chair of the Friends of Finsbury Park, reflects on the increasing importance of open spaces in the context of the pandemic and climate crisis. On 23 March 2020 the public was told to stay at home. Shops, pubs, gyms, theatres, cafes and restaurants were closed, and…
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2021 Report for the Stakeholder Working Group on Unrecorded Public Rights of Way
The aim of the Deregulation Act 2015 is to speed up the processing and determination of path claims. It is the result of many years’ work, and the consensus reached, by the rights of way stakeholder working group, consisting of balanced representation from landowners, local authorities and users. Our general secretary Kate Ashbrook is a…
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‘Keep up the good work!’ is the message from our members’ survey
‘Keep up the good work!’ is the message from our members’ survey In September 2021 we conducted our first members’ survey in over 7 years. We received an incredible response; almost 20%of our members completed the anonymous online questionnaire, answering wide-ranging questions about themselves, our organisation, the quality of our work and our website, as…
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Government ignores public access in new farm payments
Our general secretary, Kate Ashbrook, comments on the government’s lamentable failure to introduce public access into the new agricultural funding-regime. We are dismayed that the government’s new, post-Brexit, environmental land management scheme (ELMS), published on 2 December, fails to offer payments for public access and paths on farmland. This is despite repeated commitments from ministers,…
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We back bid for new greens in Battle, East Sussex
We are backing our member, Mr Bev Marks, who is spearheading a campaign to protect Battle’s green spaces for ever, by registering them as town or village greens. Bev has proposed to Battle Town Council that it persuade the owners of four green spaces voluntarily to register them as greens. The spaces have been earmarked…
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People power
So often success depends on the power of people coming together, writes our general secretary, Kate Ashbrook. Whether they are saving Bristol’s downs from car-parking, protecting London’s commons from commercial exploitation, or winning access to Worthing’s hinterland, the campaigning clout of local people is fundamental. And it always has been—witness the mass trespasses on Bolton’s…
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Book reviews autumn 2021
James Chuter Ede by Stephen Hart (Pen & Sword £25 hardback, 354 pages). They don’t make politicians like Chuter Ede (1882-1965) any more. He came from a nonconformist (Unitarian) background and began in active politics as a Liberal. He joined the Labour Party towards the end of WWI in his mid-thirties, having served as a…
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