Residents of tiny village with oldest pub in Kent lose battle to make private land a village green

Residents of a village with fewer than 130 properties and with the oldest pub in Kent have failed in their bid to register private land as a new village green. Westbere is a charming place, dotted with historic cottages and barns, and is a few miles from Canterbury.

It's a rural area with gorgeous lakes, teaming with wildlife and birds, and Ye Olde Yew Tree Pub dates back to the 14th Century. However, the hope of making land known as Two Fields the village green has been dashed.

An application to register the land between the village and Sturry, by Two Fields Action Group has been rejected by Kent County Council. The group used a section of the Commons Act 2006, which states bids can be made if " a significant number" of residents or people from a nearby neighbourhood can show sports and pastimes had taken place there for at least 20 years.

But an inspector said there was a lack of any picnics, sports, games or other activities on the land and even local people who spoke said it was used to a limited extent.

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Council papers show 88 people filled in questionnaires about usage to accompany the village green application for the land, which is 37 acres of woodland, grassland and scrub and accessed by a public footpath. However the campaigners' case was not strong enough and failed to persuade an inspector at a three day public inquiry.

The land is made up of five strips, with four registered owners: Bellway Homes Ltd; a Mr S Saadat; Westbere Green Space Protection Ltd; and a Mr S Mahallati.

Bellway Homes and Mr Mahallati objected to the application; Mr Saadat could not be traced; and Westbere Green Space Protection supported it, said the council. Objections included that the land had not been used by a sufficient number of people to give a general appearance the land was available for community use by Westbere or a surrounding neighbourhood.

The objections also included that the use of the land had not been "as of right" - wording which is part of the section of the law being used by the action group. This was because there were "prohibitive notices" in places in 2018 and 2020, and there were verbal challenges by a landowner, they claimed.

Another objection covered in the council report which went before was that most of the use for "walking", which was akin to a right of way usage rather than a "general right to recreate".

A three-day public inquiry was held during which the inspector heard first-hand evidence from witnesses, said the council report by the Public Right of Way and Access Manager to Kent County Council's which went to the regulation committee member panel on April 24.

'Majority of use walking'

The report stated: "The inspector’s conclusion in respect of the nature of the use was therefore that the overwhelming majority of use was focussed on walking and associated activities."

"In his view, all the ‘physical, documentary and photographic evidence’ supports the contention that this use would have been ‘overwhelmingly focussed’ on the main paths; there was very limited evidence of other use and even those who engaged in that use ‘recognised that they were the exception’.

"He also considered significant the lack of any picnics, sports, games or other activity on the land for the vast majority of the period, and noted that even those witnesses who spoke of generalised user ‘were clear as to the limited extent of such user’.

"Accordingly, the Inspector did not consider that the recreational use of the Application Site was of a nature that would be capable of giving rise to the registration of the land as a Village Green."

Later on in his findings, he said: "I therefore recommend that the Application for the whole Land be refused on this point. This is not, to my mind, a remotely marginal case. Indeed, all the evidence seems to me to point in the same direction."

"Even those witnesses who attest to the widest use of the Land generally, accept that their use was unusual, exceptional or limited and not reflective of how the land was generally used. Even they tended to predominantly use the main paths."

A Kent County Council spokesperson said: "Our role is to determine applications to register village greens on the basis of the legislation, regulations and case law. In this case it was determined that a village green should not be registered."

Westbere Parish Council, has this matter on its agenda for May 20. It also said on the agenda: "The parish council’s outstanding application to record Public Rights of Way over the land is a separate legal process, and a Kent County Council officer will be in touch with the relevant parties shortly."

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