Registration of Town and Village Greens

Legal Update

Recent decisions from the courts have caused considerable concern for owners and developers of land with the potential to be registered as a Town or Village Green ("TVG").

Use "as of right"

In R v Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council (2010) a TVG application under the Commons Act 2006 was used successfully by local objectors opposed to the redevelopment of part of a golf course. The Supreme Court held that the local inhabitants who used the common for recreational purposes had been using it for at least 20 years "as of right", despite sharing the common with golfers and deferring to the golfers if golf was in play.

The decision indicates that any open space used by local inhabitants for 20 years for activities such as dog walking and playing with children may be subject to a successful TVG application. However, in the recent case of Betterment Properties (Weymouth) Ltd v Dorset CC (2010) it was held that a landowner who had erected numerous signs over a period of years warning that the land was private and warned off members of the public had been doing everything, proportionately to the user, to contest and interrupt it. It was therefore clear to the members of the public who accessed the land that the landowner objected and continued to object to that use of the land.

"No Public Right of Way" signs

In R v Oxfordshire County Council (2010) the Court held that landowner's "no public right of way" signs directed only to the paths on the land and could not be taken objectively to refer to recreational use of the land as a...