The Battle for Broxhead Common – Introduction
In 2017
I made application under sec.19 Commons Act 2006 to correct the Register of Common Land because of ‘mistakes’ made by the Commons Registration Authority, which in this case was Hampshire County Council. (HCC). I knew that because of the ‘interest’ they have in Broxhead Common the matter could not be decided by them but would have to go to the Planning Inspectorate.
It took weeks to get the application in because however carefully I drew the line around the 80 acres and even though the line is already there on the OS maps and plans, it was never good enough. However eventually in August it was accepted.
There was one objection and that was from Mr A. G. P. Whitfield.
23rd January 2019
is the date of the letter from the Planning Inspectorate informing me that HCC have referred the matter to them. They offered a Hearing or Inquiry. Because I am awfully hard of hearing and the evidence was clear, I chose to have the matter dealt with by the Inspector appointed, in this case Mr. Martin Elliott.
The decision came on 29th November 2019.
The Inspector appeared to have taken HCC’s explanation verbatim and dismissed all the other evidence and comments from supporters as irrelevant. He had also badly misled himself by saying Broxhead Common had only been provisionally registered and the fact that the land had been unlawfully fenced has no bearing on whether a mistake was made in making an entry in the register.
This decision was so misconceived that I decided it must be Judicially Reviewed. I set the ball rolling with my lawyers at the beginning of December 2019.
25th March 2020.
The request for Judicial Review was acknowledged by the Court. The Defendants being Hampshire County Council, The Planning Inspectorate and as an Interested Party, Mr A. G. P. Whitfield.
5th May 2020
My application for Judicial Review came before Thornton J. who promptly refused it. The grounds are that my ‘real complaint seemed to lie with matters over 40 years ago when the land in question was not finally registered as common land having only been preliminary registered as such’ More false statements on which she decides that Martin Elliott has not made a mistake! I really need a chance to argue and show why these statements of facts are wrong.
On pain of threatened costs of £30,000 from HCC, I went ahead and asked for a renewal hearing for my application for Judicial Review. I also requested that a Planning Judge would be necessary for the complexities of the matter to be properly understood. I had also been dismayed that the problem of Broxhead Common’s missing 80 acres was considered too old to be of much relevance. To me, as an octogenarian that felt like discrimination.
So on 23rd July 2020
my application for renewal for Judicial Review to be made came to Court as a hearing. The Covid19 crisis has forced the Courts to update their technology so that now Hearings can be held via Skype. A good friend lent me her earphones complete with speaker; and I wondered how it would all work.
On the day at the appointed time the honourable judge appeared. Apparently, nobody but the lawyers could speak. That should not be a problem should it?
First the equipment was not recording and after a short delay to sort that out she pointed out that the bundle numbers did not match the electronic ones so please could the lawyers make sure this was corrected in future.
It turned out that she was a Family Court Judge rather than a Planning judge as we had requested.
It all started quite well with the confirmation that the Chief Commons Commissioner’s decision became final on the 24th May 1978 when it was dismissed from the Court of Appeal and that the Schedule to the Order for dismissal was not an Order from the Court as we had been led to believe all these years. Now however HCC were saying that the Chief Commons Commissioner had made a mistake!
In the last five minutes of the hearing, even though the Judge had said more than once that it was complicated, she decided that what had been done would have been done anyway and refused me Judicial Review. However, she did agree that Hampshire’s costs were way over the top and awarded them only £17,000. Oh well I cannot take it with me.
The only other way to get the evidence out there and to prevent some other poor soul from having to suffer decades of injustice in the future, is to tell the tale of how to steal a common aided and abetted by your local council.
I will be serialising the Story of the Battle for Broxhead Common from the beginning of the problems in 1963 when the owner of Headley Wood Farm, started fencing in the 80 acres of Broxhead’s common land, for it surely did not go unnoticed at the time and has been a cause of discontent ever since.
Broxhead Common has been identified as common land since time immemorial.