Villages in Corfe Mullen lose battle to register woodland as village green
It would have protected their rights to be free to roam over the Stony Down Plantation
A SIX-YEAR campaign to register a woodland area on the edge of Corfe Mullen as a town or village green has been lost.
Dozens of residents claimed they had roamed freely over the Stony Down Plantation for more than 20 years and registration would have protected their rights to continue to do so.
But the owners of the 131 acre site, Paradise Farms, opposed the application and since 2016 have fenced off the area to stop public access, apart from a bridleway which runs through it.
Dorset councillors decided there was not enough people claiming unfettered access to the site to amount to a “substantial” use.
Fifty-three letters had been recognised as being valid by officials support of application under the 2006 Commons Act.
A separate application is currently under consideration for sixteen bridleways across the site, submitted in 2015 and still yet to be decided.
A council planning committee heard that most of the area is mature conifer plantation which, in many areas is overgrown by rhododendrons and scrub.
The application for registration as a town or village green claimed ““the owners have allowed the public to wander anywhere within the plantation over many years.
Said the application letter: “The Plantation has been in regular use for over 50 years by the local riding stables… The same access is also enjoyed by local scouts, cubs and badger groups”.
“The woods are used by well over 100 local residents from the Corfe Mullen and Lytchett parish areas to exercise themselves and their animals…”
Councillors were told that rules about whose evidence should qualify resulted in 34 per year in 1995 rising to 53 per year in 2015, just prior to the application being submitted.
They were told by definitive map team manager Vanessa Penny that considering the population of Corfe Mullen, based on the comments of a judge in a similar case, it would need more than 200 verified submissions to qualify as “substantial use” under the Commons Act, although there was evidence of public use dating back over a period of at least 20 years.
She said that the application failed the test on the ground of insufficient use and that there was also evidence of signs on at least part of the site, stating that it was private land and entry was prohibited.
Carol Evans, for the landowners, told the hearing: “There may be a few people who feel very passionately that it is their right to roam freely across all of this privately owned land, but it does not, as evidence, produce a significant number of people for the purposed of the Act.
She said that around 80 per cent of all of the submissions were invalid for a variety of reasons.
“If approved it would sterilise the land… we feel that this application has been submitted solely to frustrate the land owner.”
Cllr Belinda Rideout said there would be a clear conflict between unlimited public access and the use of the site as a working plantation, potentially putting people at risk.
The committee agreed unanimously to reject the application.