Paddico (267) Ltd v Kirklees Metropolitan Council & Ors

For registration under the original class c definition of a town or village green, qualifying use had to be predominantly by inhabitants of a single locality. A locality meant an administrative district or an area with legally significant boundaries. Use by inhabitants of two separate areas could not satisfy that requirement, even where the land lay between them and served both communities.

Under the amended definition, use by a significant number of inhabitants of one or more neighbourhoods within one or more localities may suffice. On an application to rectify the register, the court must independently determine whether the registration ought to have been made and whether rectification is just. Justice requires a balancing of the landowner’s position, the users’ interests, delay and reliance. The register was rectified.

Paddico sought rectification under section 14 of the Commons Registration Act 1965 of the registration of Clayton Fields as a town or village green. The registration had been made in 1997 on the basis of recreational use by residents of Edgerton and Birkby.

The Council did not actively participate. The defendants argued that the registration was supportable by reference to other localities, parishes, the Edgerton Conservation Area, or the amended statutory test introduced by section 98 of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. The issues were whether the original registration ought to have been made, whether it could be supported on another basis, and whether rectification was just.

1. Disposition. The register was ordered to be rectified by removing the 1997 registration of Clayton Fields as a town or village green.
2. Section 14 required four conditions: registration pursuant to section 13; an appearance that no amendment or a different amendment ought to have been made; inability to correct the error under the regulations; and that the court deemed rectification just. The application was not an appeal from the registration authority. The court was entitled to conduct a full review of the legal principles and underlying evidence.
3. Under the original section 22(1) class c definition, locality meant an administrative district or an area within legally significant boundaries. The qualifying users had to be inhabitants of a single locality. Although the judge considered that the statutory language might naturally have permitted more than one locality, he held himself bound by the subsequent high-level authority treating the expression as singular.
4. Edgerton and Birkby were not shown to be legally significant administrative districts. In any event, the evidence showed a broadly even division of users between them and did not establish predominant use by either one. The Conservation Area and the relevant parishes did not provide an alternative basis because the evidence did not satisfy the twenty-year predominance requirement.
5. The amended section 22(1A) test was more liberal. It required use by a significant number of inhabitants of a locality or of one or more cohesive neighbourhoods within one or more localities. If the registration had not already existed, a later application might have succeeded on that basis. However, use after registration was not use as of right, since it occurred pursuant to the registration.
6. That point did not automatically determine the justice question. The court balanced the original error, the probability that the owner would have prevented later qualifying use, the landowner’s loss of development rights without compensation, the fourteen-year delay, the absence of proved reliance by residents, their legitimate expectations, and the proposed provision of recreational space. The balance favoured rectification.