“You’ve been 547ed!”

We already know that TVG registration, and the fence coming down, won’t prevent Cotham School using Stoke Lodge Playing Fields for its PE lessons. Shared use is the basis on which it took the lease, and it’s a relatively common model for school playing fields. But that doesn’t mean that Cotham would have no control at all over any actual risks to its pupils during lessons.

The law provides a way for schools to control nuisance and disturbance on their premises, including playing fields. Cotham School has recently published the following statement about this:

The problem is, this statement isn’t true. It’s not correct that ‘any person without lawful authority to be present on the premises (including playing fields) is guilty of an offence’. Here’s what section 547 actually says:

You can see that it’s not ‘being present’ that is an offence, but being present and causing or permitting nuisance or disturbance to the annoyance of lawful users. And ‘nuisance or disturbance’ isn’t just ‘stuff that Cotham doesn’t happen to like’ – it has a legal meaning. The DfE’s guidance on this when the Act was published was:

So – other activities might also be a nuisance, but the bar is a lot higher than Cotham is trying to claim. And suggesting that just being there is a criminal offence is completely wrong, as the school must know. The DfE’s current guidance is here and it makes this clear:

The same guidance says that schools can bar someone from school premises if they feel that the individual’s ‘aggressive, abusive or insulting behaviour or language is a risk to staff or pupils’. That’s not just going for a walk on the field. Then there’s a process to be followed, including giving the individual notice and hearing their side of the story. And then, before you get to section 547, there must have been a ‘nuisance or disturbance’, in the sense recognised by the courts.

And remember, this land is not the school’s private and exclusive property (despite its claims to the contrary) – Cotham’s rights as tenant under the lease are subject to ongoing informal use by the community. We think it’s dishonest and reprehensible to suggest that people have committed a criminal offence just by being on the playing fields when that’s clearly not the case.

The government’s guidance on school security suggests that schools should ‘establish and maintain relationships locally and work in partnership with the police, local authority and others in the wider community’ to mitigate risks. Hostile and inaccurate statements intended to antagonise the community are not the best way forward.