Village green test case goes to Court of Appeal

The Master of the Rolls and two other judges today began hearing an important test case on town and village green (TVG) registration. The case is the first to test rules dating from 2013 that introduced “trigger events” that can block the registration of a TVG. The rules were introduced in response to “genuine concerns [the TGV rules were] being used as a device to delaying development,” according to Paul Brown QC, the lawyer representing Wiltshire Council in this case. “Many developers may not touch a plot of land if there is a potential village green there,” he said. The land at the centre of this appeal is in Royal Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire. It is a triangular-sharped plot of 380 sq m adjacent to a housing development. According to court papers, locals had mistakenly thought it was council land until the owners Cooper Estates Strategic Land gated and bolted it in 2015. Residents applied to Wiltshire Council to register it as a TVG, which they did in 2017. The owner applied to have this quashed, citing the trigger event rules. According to the 2013 rules, one of the trigger events listed in the schedule of the legislation is “a development plan which identifies the land for potential development”. They argued that, as the proposed village green is within the boundaries of the local development plan, there should be a presumption in favour of development, and the village green designation should be quashed. In a ruling last July, Deputy High Court Judge David Elvin QC agreed, and quashed the designation. Wiltshire Council appealed and the case was heard by the Court of Appeal today. Opening their case, Paul Brown QC said that “the factual background to the case is neither here nor there.” Their argument is “a pure point of law”. His argument focuses on the word “identifies” in the schedule attached to the 2013 rules. He says that a plot being located within an area covered by a local plan is not enough to “identify” it as an area where development is presumed. “If the judge’s conclusion is correct, it would mean that the drawing of a ‘limit of development’ around the outside of any settlement, however large, within which there was a presumption of sustainable development was sufficient to… preclude an application for registration of land as a TVG.” The hearing is scheduled to last for a day and a half, with judgment due at a later, as yet unspecified, date. Cooper Estates Strategic Land Limited v Wiltshire Council & Ors Court of Appeal (Lewison LJ,Floyd LJ, Henderson LJ) Hearing date: 8-9 May 2019