The sad thing about commons and village greens is that they seem to get smaller over the years, rather than bigger. A tarmac footpath is installed on one corner here and a paved area for people waiting at the bus stop goes over there. One square metre at a time, the common or green gets smaller. Fifty years later, nobody can remember whether the tarmac was highway land or village green land and in 200 years' time, the green has shrunk irrecoverably. Commons and Village Greens need to be protected and the people who need to protect them are the members and Clerks of Parish and Town Councils.
Although commons and village greens have been with us for a very long time, the Commons Act 2006 and subsequent Statutory
Instruments have changed the law.
Headlines
The New Commons Councils
Sections 26 to 37 of the Commons Act 2006 came into force in England in January 2010.
The Schedule to the (draft) Commons Councils (Standard Constitution) (England) Regulations 2010 sets out a standard
constitution which is to apply to all of the new Commons Councils. Commons Councils should hopefully go some way to
addressing problems with the management of commons which currently exist. Sometimes the owner of the common is not known
or is absent. Sometimes there is under-grazing or over-grazing. Perhaps there is difficulty in accessing available
funding because not all commoners are willing to enter into the schemes on offer.
Now, if a Commons Council is established, there will be a body with a corporate identity, empowered by an order of the
Secretary of State to make rules for the management of the common; a body that has the power to prepare or adopt management
plans, enter into agreements, raise money and serve notices on the owner. A Commons Council may be set up for the
management of a single common or for a number of different commons within a particular locality (such as within a national
park). Its members will be those persons appointed or elected by the commoners, owners and others specified in the
'establishment order'. Their meetings will be open to the public, as will most of their agendas and minutes. There
is guidance on the DEFRA website and Natural England plans to publish additional guidance in April 2010.
There are similar new provisions coming into force in Wales.
Contact: Debbie Ashton