Charity urges councils ahead of deadline to write to those affected by wrongful registration as common land

Under Part 1 of the Commons Act 2006, applications can be made to deregister common land throughout England, save in seven local-authority pioneer areas where the deadline for applications has already closed.

However, the provision is a transitional window, which opened in 2014, and closes on 15 March 2027.

The charity said: “After that date, it generally will be impossible to deregister common land without providing an equivalent area of replacement land in exchange.”

The pioneer areas were Cornwall, Devon, Blackburn with Darwen, Hertfordshire, Herefordshire, Kent, and Lancashire. The deadline in the pioneer areas was 31 December 2020.

The charity noted it has called on the environment minister, Baroness Hayman, to extend the opportunity to re-register lost commons to the whole of England on a rolling programme. 

Meanwhile, it called on local authorities to use the remaining time to write to those who own or occupy land in the most “egregious cases of wrongful registration”, and alert them to the “fast-approaching” deadline for action.  

Open Spaces Society case officer Hugh Craddock said: “When commons and town or village greens first were registered under the Commons Registration Act 1965, many errors were made - both of omission and of wrongful registration. Land, including people’s homes and gardens, and farmer’s fields, sometimes were incorrectly included within the extent of a common or green, and the mistake went unnoticed at the time. And the registration of some commons was wrongly rejected, without any opportunity for public engagement. 

“Under the 2006 Act, some of these mistakes can be revisited. It is, for example, possible to deregister houses and their curtilage where the wrongful registration can be traced back to the 1965 Act.  But it always was intended that there the opportunity to correct the registers would be time limited, after which the registers would be considered final. In most of England, the deadline for applications is now just one year away. Yet the society continues to encounter many cases where wrongly-registered land remains on the register, and the owners of that land have an ever-diminishing opportunity to do something about it.”

He continued: “Had the government implemented the 2006 Act in the way that was intended, local authorities would have been under a duty to publicise opportunities to amend the register during a transitional period. But the government chose to deliver the opportunity to deregister land in isolation, and local authorities need have done nothing to alert local communities to the limited opportunity for deregistration. The public also has so far been deprived - save in the pioneer areas - of the opportunity to re-register commons which were wrongly thrown off the registers under the 1965 Act.”

Applications to deregister certain types of wrongly-registered common land can be made under paragraphs 6 to 9 of Schedule 2 to the Commons Act 2006.

Lottie Winson