The Avon signs and ‘sufficiency’

Why are some old signs put up in the mid-1980s by a Council that was abolished in 1996 still causing debates? The issue is whether an objection to informal use had been made clear by Avon, including by the use of clearly-worded signs that were sufficient in number and appropriately located, so that people knew they shouldn’t be using the land (and so weren’t using it ‘as of right’).

That means it’s important to work out whether there were enough signs to make any supposed objection clear to people using the playing fields. There were three Avon signs at entrance points to the playing fields, but the evidence in TVG1 was that one of these was at an entrance that wasn’t accessible to the public, so the Inspector’s recommendation was based on the other two – at the West Dene entrance by the pavilion and in the car park of Stoke Lodge house. He said that these were sufficient to mean that use was not ‘as of right’, relying on a Court of Appeal case called Winterburn.

When the Public Rights of Way and Greens Committee considered the Inspector’s TVG1 report in December 2016, it thought differently – it decided that this small number of signs on a site of this size could not possibly be enough, and that Stoke Lodge was very different from the car park in the Winterburn case. The Committee decided to register the land in December 2016, and Bristol City Council defended that decision before the High Court in the judicial review that followed. The High Court said that the Committee’s reasoning was ‘not controversial’ – but because the Committee had accepted the Inspector’s report, it couldn’t then reach a different conclusion without showing its reasoning (which the minutes failed to do).

Here’s why it’s not controversial to say that Stoke Lodge Playing Fields are very different from the Winterburn car park:

The car park in Winterburn had one entrance and two signs – one at the entrance and one in the window of the building. The court held that no one could miss the signs, so they were effective to  make the car park private, for club members only. But the Winterburn car park was tiny – about 450 square metres in area. Seven parking spaces. It’s about 1/10th of the size of a football pitch. We’ve overlaid it, to scale, on the aerial view of Stoke Lodge above.

Stoke Lodge Playing Fields are around 88,000 square metres in area – 200 times bigger than that car park! There are many entry points all round the field, and many residential back gates opening onto the field. Sports teams tend to arrive at the pavilion entrance or via the car park, but many casual users do not, and were never aware of a sign because they never went past one. Two signs on an area of land this big – is that really enough? There’s never been any suggestion that Avon asked local homeowners not to use their back gates onto the field, for example – it never even sent a simple letter suggesting that it didn’t want them to use the field. 

It’s obvious that Stoke Lodge is very different from the Winterburn car park, and so the question of whether there are enough signs to be effective is a live issue in these applications.