Campaigners tap crowd funding for legal representation on village green inquiry

A village action group is looking to crowd fund legal representation for the inquiry into their application to register a piece of land as a village green.

Mankley Field is located between the villages of Leonard Stanley and King's Stanley.

The landowners, along with Gladman Developments, won outline planning permission at appeal for 150 dwellings on the site.

In their entry on the Crowd Justice site, the action group said their village had only 600 dwellings and so a development of this scale would destroy its cherished village life, and a valuable green space would be lost forever.

The group, with the backing of the parish council and its neighbouring parish council, has submitted a village green application. This application was amended following a judicial review.

The inquiry is now expected to take place in October 2015 and last for eight days.

The group said they had raised money in the community already in relation to legal costs, with Easter egg hunts, hunt the scarecrow games, and the support of parish councils.

However, they said they needed to raise a further £5,000 to ensure the group had the necessary legal representation.

The group said they had received pro bono assistance from the Environmental Law Foundation, but needed to raise funds to be able to instruct barrister Cain Ormondroyd from Francis Taylor Building.

The group wants as well to raise enough to engage a specialist solicitor for the inquiry “as ELF's assistance, as a charity, is necessarily limited”.

They have set a £5,000 initial target, but want to raise £10,000 to be able to hire a specialist solicitor in a targeted way for the inquiry. A total of £15,000 “would enable us to retain the solicitor and other legal counsel for the entirety of the inquiry”.