The Battle for Broxhead Common
The Case for Hampshire County Council – PART 40
- Until this moment in time my focus had been to get a reasonable riding route over the common land to replace at least a few of the 23 trails which had been obstructed by the unauthorised fencing.
- This had been the ninth Public Inquiry which I had attended so I was not unfamiliar with the procedure and realised that the process had changed considerably for the worse. This was not a peoples’ court anymore and I was up against what was beginning to look like an Establishment or Bureaucratic cover up to do with the registration of Broxhead Common.
- The problem was that on more than one occasion I had perused the files to be found in the County Commons Registration Office and knew there was nothing more to be found there, indeed some of the papers had in any case disappeared.
- Nevertheless, with the help of my MP, I made a complaint to the Parliamentary Ombudsman about the previous Planning Inspector’s decision. The upshot of that was that they were unable to change anything, and the case needed to go to the High Court.
- December 2011. So, while I read from cover to cover of the two reference books by Gerald Gadsden on the Law of Commons, I decided to make a few FOI/EIR enquiries of my own.
- 12th December 2011, I receive a reply from Hampshire County Council, Culture, Communities and Business Services. They say: “No records have been found with reference to the extinguishment for the whole or part of the 180 acres” of Broxhead Common.
2011 EIR No documents of extinguishment
Next time: I make further enquiries under EIR