Of course, the Broxhead Commoners’ were most concerned by the strange turn of events and in:

1. July 1978 issued a press release.  It explains that after the High Court judgement in 1977, Mr Connell had resigned from the BCA. This is important because Mr Connell was at the hearing of the Court of Appeal by which time he was probably in receipt of a large amount of money from Mr Whitfield, who paid for his Rights over the 80 acres in order, he thought, to extinguish them! Hampshire County Council had made themselves a co-respondent to this!  Is this incitement to fraud by the parties present?

2. 19th October 1978, one of the commoner’s, a Mr Nicholson even wrote to the Prime Minister asking why his rights had been curtailed and why the fencing remained. 1 There followed much correspondence between the Commons Commissioner’s Office, the Department of the Environment and the Nicholson’s. The problem seems to have been that the Officers had no idea that the commoners were being told by HCC that the Chief Commons Commissioner had split the common in half, and their rights had been restricted, and because the fencing was unauthorised they did not know of that either. They had obviously assumed, as they would, that the Chief Commons Commissioner’s Final Decision had been faithfully transferred to the Commons Register by Hampshire County Council.   

Eventually Mr Nicholson received the letter from the DOE telling him that the whole area was registered common land and his rights extended over the whole of it.

This confirmation was the reason why the commoners did not resort to Judicial Review.

Nicholson from DOE
Broxhead, Nicholson to Prime Minister16082020
Broxhead reg to Mrs Nicholson LETTER24022020

Next time: We will look at what Hampshire County Council had made of it all.

All 'TCHCC' Parts so far

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