Open Spaces Society’s call to communities urgently to secure their greens

Heritage Green, at the junction of Caldershaw Road and Cut Lane in Norden, had the village green officially recognised following a three-and-a-half year fight

The Open Spaces Society, Britain’s oldest national conservation body, is calling on communities to identify now, any land which might be eligible for registration as a town or village green before it is threatened with development.

Land can be registered as a town or village green if it has been used by local people for informal recreation for 20 years, without challenge or interruption. Once registered the land is protected from development and local people have rights of recreation there.

In Rochdale, Heritage Green, the field at the junction of Caldershaw Road and Cut Lane, Norden, was approved as a village green, after the application was unanimously approved in October 2018.

The community group celebrated after winning a three-and-a-half year fight to have a village green officially recognised.

• www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/123164/joy-at-village-green-victory

In her Opinion piece in the summer issue of the Open Spaces Society’s magazine Open Space, the society’s general secretary, Kate Ashbrook, writes of the body-blow to town and village greens caused by the court of appeal’s judgment on land at Royal Wootton Bassett (RWB) in Wiltshire. The court has outlawed the registration of land as a green which is ‘within a settlement boundary’. 

Kate explains: “The egregious Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013 introduced ‘trigger events’ which, in England, prevented greens registration on land with even a whiff of planning permission. Ever since then the opportunities for registration have been curtailed. This appeal court judgment, for 380 square metres of amenity space at Vowley View on the edge of RWB, will have a dismal impact.

“It means that land is barred from registration if it is deemed to be ‘land for potential development’ in a development plan, even if its boundaries have not been identified in the plan as a development site.

“So now greens can be stolen from us behind our backs.

“It makes it more important than ever that local people should identify land they have used, for 20 years or more, and apply to register it before it is threatened or included (often surreptitiously) in a development plan as ‘land for potential development’.

“We strongly urge local communities to get on with this, before it is too late,” says Kate.