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Panorama of application land – the green crescent on the left and the green area on the right up to the trees are all the land which would have been affected.
We have welcomed the decision of Worcestershire County Council to reject an application to deregister part of Trimpley Green, common land near Kidderminster.
The application was made to the council in July 2016, in relation to land east of the pond on the Habberley road. The application proposed to deregister common land adjacent to Crofton Lodge and Crofton Park. Were the application granted, the land would be removed from the register so that it would cease to be common land. The society objected to the application, along with 36 others.
If the land were to be deregistered it would no longer benefit from the protection given by special legislation which requires the Secretary of State to give consent for any development or encroachment, in addition to the usual requirement for planning permission.
Hugh Craddock, one of our case officers, said: ‘We are delighted that the council has decided to refuse this application. The council’s investigation has shown what we said in our objection—there was no evidence that this part of the common had been taken into residential use by the date on which the common was first registered, in 1968. Instead, the present driveway across the common was found to date from nearly ten years later. That means the application was bound to fail, because the residential use of the land came long after it was registered as common.
‘We are glad that this land will remain part of the common, and we call on the owners to allow it to recover its natural character.’
Trimpley Green is registered as common land by Worcestershire County Council. It is 22 acres in extent, and is subject to registered rights to graze sheep, cattle, horses and goats, as well as rights of estovers (a right to collect firewood), piscary (fishing in the pond) and pannage (turning out pigs in the autumn to forage on beechmast and acorns).