Village green campaigners to take legal action over conduct of meeting

A campaign group seeking to designate a village green is crowd funding a further appeal over Wokingham Borough Council's conduct of the meeting that decided on the status of the land.

Limmerhill Village Green Group (LVGG), whose crowdfunding page is here, said it first tried to register the village’s green in 2015 based on its long use as such, but the site’s owner objected.

In December 2016 an inspector decided after a seven-day hearing that its use was largely only as a footpath and refused the application.

Wokingham met to discuss the inspector’s report in March 2018 in a meeting held initially in public but which the group said was later made private and rejected the village green application.

LVGG said it had had legal advice that the manner in which the March meeting was conducted was unlawful and so wanted a judicial review to quash its decision.

It also hopes to set a precedent that all applications to designate village greens should come under the Aarhus Convention and so have a £5,000 cap on costs awarded to the other party in failed applications. 

Cllr Simon Weeks, executive member planning and enforcement at Wokingham Borough Council, said: “The legal action to change the Commons Registration Committee’s decision not to register land at Limmerhill has failed on two occasions at the High Court. This third attempt, via the Court of Appeal, at significant cost to the public purse, will be robustly defended by the Council.”

Mark Smulian