St John's College, Cambridge, R (On the Application Of) v Cambridgeshire County Council

Regulation 5(4) permits a registration authority to give more than one reasonable opportunity to remedy a defective town or village green application. The regulation does not impose a once-only correction limit. The threshold for treating an application as duly made is relatively low because the statutory process is simple and informal. Applications should be read as a whole and without undue legalism. Questions concerning the merits of locality, neighbourhood and user evidence ordinarily arise after an application has been duly made, under regulation 6, rather than at the preliminary procedural stage.

St John's College sought judicial review of two decisions by Cambridgeshire County Council concerning an application by David Rhys Hughes Davies to register College land as a town or village green under section 15 of the Commons Act 2006.

The Council first allowed the applicant a further opportunity to correct the application and later decided that it was duly made. The College argued that regulation 5(4) of the 2007 Regulations permitted only one opportunity to remedy defects, and that the application failed to identify a locality. The central issues were the proper construction of regulation 5(4), and whether the application was duly made.

1. Permission and outcome. Permission to apply for judicial review was granted at the rolled-up hearing, but the claim was dismissed.
2. Regulation 5(4) contains two limbs. The first permits summary rejection where, after preliminary consideration, an application is not duly made and cannot be put in order. The second requires a reasonable opportunity to remedy an identified defect where the application can be put in order. Nothing in the language limits the applicant to one such opportunity. The authority must, however, act promptly and allow only a relatively short period for correction. Church Commissioners for England v Hampshire County Council [2014] EWCA Civ 634 supported that approach.
3. The process is simple and informal, so the threshold for treating an application as duly made is relatively low. The application must be read as a whole, rather than as though it were a pleading in private litigation. The form, taken as a whole, identified the claimed locality sufficiently, including the city of Cambridge and, at least, Newnham Ward. The conservation area could not constitute a qualifying locality.
4. The Council was therefore entitled to offer a second opportunity to correct the application. In any event, the application was duly made after the July 2016 corrections, because there had never been a defect in the statement of locality. The Council’s decision of 9 November 2016 was correct, although its reasons were wrong.
5. Questions concerning whether the claimed area was legally a neighbourhood, and whether the user evidence established the merits of registration, were matters for the later merits stage under regulation 6. The issue of unilateral amendment by an applicant was left undecided.

First-instance judicial review. Permission was granted at the rolled-up hearing, but the application was dismissed.