Category: FOI requests

You said, we did…

Dec 1st, 2025

On 26 September 2025, Bristol City Council’s Chief Executive Nick Hibberd wrote to a large number of local residents in response to emails expressing concern that Cotham School had started to reinstall a fence around Stoke Lodge just hours after Councillors had called for a pause and for compromise.

In that letter, Mr Hibberd said that ‘everyone recognises the right of the local community to use the space around the field’. Happy to hear it, but that’s not what the lease says – it says that Cotham School’s right to use (the whole of) Stoke Lodge for PE is ‘subject to all existing rights and use of [the whole of] the Property, including use by the community‘.

And when he went on to say that ‘We understand that the school has set out a hierarchy of use of the fields’ our ears pricked up. Because experience suggests that in Cotham’s opinion, local residents would be way, way at the bottom of that hierarchy – so far down that we don’t exist in their mind. But again, that’s not what the lease says. It’s basic grammar – if your right is ‘subject to’ someone else’s right or use, then you don’t get to dictate, restrict or end that right or use. And that’s what Cotham signed up to in its lease for Stoke Lodge.

So it was with great interest that we read the first draft of the Chief Exec’s email (published in response to an information request). What Nick Hibberd originally proposed to say was:

Spot the difference – it’s the right of the local community not just to use the space around the land (what does that even mean?) but the whole of the land that is not actually being used as a sports pitch, and in a way that is acceptable to all (not unilaterally imposed by Cotham School).

But those words disappeared, to be replaced by the sentence about hierarchy of use – simply because that’s what Cotham School wanted. So it seems that the Council believes that the community has rights to use the land as per the lease but Cotham doesn’t want it to say that, and so the Chief Exec ended up suggesting something contrary to the lease instead. Who’s in charge here, the landlord or the tenant?

Mr Hibberd’s email to residents went on to discuss the public rights of way across Stoke Lodge, saying that ‘Bristol City Council will not take action to protect the rights of way unless and until they have been confirmed by the [Secretary of State]. We have written to the school making it clear that the rights of way will need to be respected if they are confirmed.’

In his draft response, Mr Hibberd continued: ‘In any event, it is our understanding that the school is planning to construct the fencing should the PROW remain, so that it is accessible’.

But Sandra Fryer said “please await our comments” and her mark-up changed this statement about BCC’s understanding to:

‘In any event, it is our understanding that the school has taken this [the public rights of way] into account in the plan for reinstating the fence.’

And that’s the version that got sent to local residents – as directed by Cotham School. That change of wording is interesting. Clearly, the school is aware that with the fence where it is, the PROWs are not properly accessible. In fact the fence itself creates many wider accessibility problems (even with the gates currently open), which have not received any consideration from either the school or the Council.

But here’s the question – Cotham School clearly knows that it is obstructing public rights of way. It chose not to reinstate the fence in a way that means that the PROWs remain freely accessible. In fact it did the opposite, building its fence around them to obstruct them all. So was Nick Hibberd actively misled by the school about this? Did he understand the change that was made by Cotham School and if so why did he accept it? As he says, the Council has written to the school making it clear that the rights of way will need to be respected if they are confirmed. And the Council believes both that the public rights of way exist and that the community should be able to use the land ‘in a way that can be agreed by all sides’.

It seems it’s only Cotham that won’t talk, won’t agree and doesn’t want to respect the public rights of way or the lease – whatever its landlord (and the law) says.
Facts (not alternative ones)

Mar 13th, 2024

Today some documents were disclosed under FOI, including a letter from Cotham School to BCC Chief Exec Stephen Peacock, seeking a meeting to discuss the school’s strategy to ‘resolve this situation’ (i.e. to overturn the PROWG Committee’s decision to register Stoke Lodge as a village green). Here’s the letter:

This letter was sent before the section 14 claim was launched, and we know that it resulted in a meeting in early December. But in particular let’s look at some alternative facts vs actual facts.

The letter comes from Cotham’s Chair of Governors, who is Sandra Fryer. You can see in the underlined text that she says that if the land is a village green, then ‘the spirit and purpose of the lease is not capable of being met’. That’s quite a statement considering that the lease was signed on 31 August 2011 when a TVG application was already under way. In fact, in the words of Ms Fryer’s own evidence to the TVG inquiry in 2016, the lease ‘was taken on the basis that the TVG application was in place’.

Ms Fryer also gave evidence that ‘in the past the use of the playing fields had been satisfactory from the School’s point of view’. That’s right – Cotham had no problem with sharing use of the land with the community. She’s not the only person who thought that. Here’s a letter from the first TVG applicant, David Mayer, to the previous Head of Cotham School, Malcolm Willis, just after academy conversion in 2011:

See how David refers to ongoing community use ‘as of right’, and ‘the ongoing use of the Parkland by both your academy and the Community, in the harmonious way currently enjoyed by both interested parties’?

Here is Dr Willis’ response: ‘Thank you for your letter concerning Stoke Lodge and your express wish to maintain our close and harmonious relationship. We completely echo your sentiments…’.

So – Cotham took the lease on the basis that its rights are subject to the community being able to use the land as it always had, and knowing that a TVG application was in place, and it was perfectly happy with that ongoing situation. So now it cannot (with any honesty) say that when a TVG is granted, the ‘spirit and purpose of the lease is not capable of being met’. It’s just not true. That language is designed to make BCC believe that the school has a problem (that doesn’t really exist) and that BCC is responsible for fixing that problem (which it isn’t). But the senior BCC officers at the meeting apparently fell for it. And as for ‘safe and useable playing fields’ – we’ve been over this time and time again. Many schools use public access detached playing fields. Many schools have no dedicated playing fields at all.

As we know, the school’s strategy didn’t pan out. That’s because we raised the issue of the constitution – it’s unlawful for the Executive to interfere in decisions made by a regulatory committee – and it’s because the PROWG Committee stood resolutely for the constitution and for the defence of its decision to register Stoke Lodge. But this isn’t the first time we’ve seen these tactics from Cotham School, and we absolutely reject the school’s use of false claims like these in its ongoing campaign against the community.
Breaking news on landowner statements

Jun 9th, 2023

We’ve talked before about the long and vexatious struggle to get Bristol City Council to disclose correspondence about the possibility of making a landowner statement in relation to Stoke Lodge. If you want details of the FOI saga, click here.

A landowner statement is a mechanism under the Commons Act 2006 that allows landowners to protect land from registration as a town or village green and from claims for additional rights of way. The sole purpose of this is to ‘bring to an end any period of recreational use ‘as of right’ over land’:

That’s from the official DEFRA guidance, which also explains:

So, if a landowner has an opportunity to make a landowner statement before 20 years of ‘as of right’ use have accrued, and it wants to stop the clock on that use, it has a really easy way to do that. But if 20 years’ use are already in the bag, then depositing the statement might trigger a TVG application.

We know that Cotham School had been asking BCC to make a landowner statement for Stoke Lodge, and we know that no statement was made. We asked for copies of the correspondence around those discussions. And BCC said we were vexatious, but a month ago it changed its mind and said that actually the correspondence couldn’t be disclosed because it was legally privileged and/or internal communications and/or a live and ongoing matter.

The Information Commissioner has acted very quickly to look into this, in view of the relevance of the information to an active legal process. The ICO has ordered some of the material to be disclosed (but not the material that was legally privileged or genuinely covered by the internal communications exemption). The ICO had no truck with BCC’s claim that it was a live matter, because, as the case officer pointed out, BCC hadn’t restarted any such discussions until after the FOI request had been made (it seems as though someone thought that might be a cunning plan to avoid disclosure!).

We don’t yet have the documents that are due to be disclosed, but possibly the most significant statement is the one made by BCC to the Information Commissioner, underlined above. We now know that BCC got detailed legal advice about this issue, and on the basis of that advice it decided not to make a landowner statement ending ‘as of right’ use.

Remember that this is happening in 2018. Clearly, either BCC thought that ‘as of right’ use was still ongoing and it didn’t want to take action to stop that, or it thought 20 years of ‘as of right’ use had already built up, and it didn’t want to provoke another TVG application (which happened anyway because of the school’s stubborn refusal to talk about compromise solutions).

Either way, that absolutely confirms our case for registration. Neither Cotham School (because it was asking for a statement), nor the Council (because it decided not to make one), nor any of their legal advisers, thought in summer 2018 that ‘as of right’ use had ended. And that also means they didn’t think the Avon signs were effective either (otherwise ‘as of right’ use wouldn’t exist). They’ve spent an awful lot of time and money arguing the opposite, which is a real shame because it seems they actually agreed with us all along!
Private Eye retrospective 1: FOIs

Jun 2nd, 2023

When We Love Stoke Lodge discovered, in 2021, that Cotham School’s Chair of Governors, Sandra Fryer, had used her contacts to ask for our TVG applications to be ‘kicked into the long grass’ a year earlier (see yesterday’s post), we naturally wanted to find out whether there had been other activity or favours requested along those lines that we should know about.

A Freedom of Information request to Bristol City Council to disclose any other correspondence between the CRA and Cotham School staff or governors was the first to receive a response from BCC that any request relating to Stoke Lodge was vexatious (which, by the way, isn’t a proper way to use the FoI exemptions).

Private Eye reported on this in September 2021, when the Council had become so used to saying that Stoke Lodge-related requests were vexatious, that it denied a request that was nothing at all to do with Stoke Lodge:

The Information Commissioner’s Office ruled against BCC in August 2022 (you can read the decision notice here), saying that it was wrong for the Council ‘to apply a blanket approach to requests received about Stoke Lodge Playing Fields… The issues raised are of public importance, both from the view of public access to formerly open public space, but also from a
point of protecting the land and landscape within and around the site.
There are also health and safety aspects relating to the use of the land.’

The Information Commissioner said that an issue like this ‘is likely to raise concerns which many parties may decide to make requests over. As such, the council is likely to receive a large number of requests from parties interested in its actions in the various different capacities in which it acts… The application to the Commons Registration Authority, and the council’s objection to this, are likely to generate correspondence, questions and requests. It raises issues of importance as regards open access to the land, which the school currently restricts. Other issues involve the protection of access to open space, the protection of the environment within, and surrounding the area concerned, as well as concerns that the council has acted appropriately in allowing the fencing to be erected, and in its oversight of the protection of the land under the school’s governance. The Commissioner recognises a high degree of value in these issues in regard to the protection of the environment in and around the site.’

The Commissioner was not impressed by the Council’s allegation that We Love Stoke Lodge was attempting to ‘disrupt or harass the council until it changes its position’. The decision says that the Commissioner ‘does not consider that the effect of receiving the requests would be a significant burden upon an authority the size of the council when compared to the value and purpose behind the requests for information.’

Private Eye reported on the decision in October 2022:

Unfortunately, as we’ve explained previously, this wasn’t our (or the Information Commissioner’s) final tussle with being given the ‘vexatious request’ treatment by BCC.

It seems that there is quite a lot of information about its dealings with Cotham School over Stoke Lodge that BCC really doesn’t want to share. Another current example is how correspondence about making a landowner statement in relation to Stoke Lodge – which is a ‘smoking gun’ for the TVG applications – is still being withheld by BCC (click here to read more). The Council’s refusal of that request is under investigation by the Information Commissioner; it looks as if BCC will try anything to delay disclosing information that helps to prove the case for the TVG.

On a matter that involves public access to important open space for generations to come, that’s a very bad look for BCC.
Tell us what you really want: Cotham’s 2014 options paper

May 25th, 2023

Following on from yesterday’s post, we’re still in 2014 and in the middle of the TVG1 process. Cotham School consistently claimed that it needed the whole of Stoke Lodge, didn’t know anything about any plans to turn it into a sports hub, and wanted to keep it as playing fields. Now let’s have a look at the options paper drawn up by Sandra Fryer with help from a planning consultant setting out ‘options for the long term use of Stoke Lodge’. You can see the options paper in full here.

Option 1 is to put up some extra signs (about keeping dogs off pitch areas) – the status quo is said not to be possible because of the risk assessment, but we now know that the risk assessment was overstated and left out crucial features like the presence of teachers during lessons (click here). It’s worth noting that just a few weeks after that assessment, it was already being suggested that signs and some minor fence repairs would enable the school to use Stoke Lodge – and then by November 2014 governors’ minutes record Ms Fryer suggesting ‘Need to revisit risk assessment and revise going back to using Stoke Lodge’ – the school didn’t really believe the risk assessment either, it was just a useful tool.

Option 2 is to move all sport to SL to save their hire costs at Coombe Dingle, but noting that year-round use of SL is not possible due to waterlogged pitches (still true).

Option 3 is to dispose of Stoke Lodge (something the school has always denied considering) and to develop a new all weather pitch on the school site (something they now have). It notes that ‘the University will be cross’ if they do this (as opposed to ‘University happy’ for option 1), although it’s not immediately obvious why the University’s opinion should be relevant to Cotham’s delivery of the PE curriculum.

Option 4 is to fence the site, restricting access to ‘minimal community use around edges of site’ – sound familiar? It also involves an all-weather pitch at Stoke Lodge which ‘could be an attractive asset for the school’. Note the comment that ‘this may be most difficult to resolve with the Community since no recognition of their presence let alone their dogs’. And yet this ‘most difficult’ option is the one that the school insisted on implementing in 2019 – and then it got annoyed that it didn’t go down well!

Option 5 is to split the fields into a ‘significant community park’ (perhaps the half and half solutions set out in the Bush Consultancy feasibility study?) plus more intensive sports use including an all-weather pitch.

Option 6 is a ‘sports hub’ proposal with an all-weather pitch and a ‘small local park’.

Extraordinarily, option 7 involved the school taking over control of Stoke Lodge house (the Adult Learning Centre) as well! For those who have been around long enough, this is essentially the Biddulph Plan (that the school has always denied it had anything to do with).

Each of options 4 to 7 involves putting an all-weather pitch on Stoke Lodge – which would mean more fencing around the pitch itself, and floodlighting (below is an extract from a document prepared by the PE staff showing that they won’t put floodlights around their onsite facilities because of local residents – but think it’s ok to do this at Stoke Lodge):

Now of course, this was 9 years ago. Some of these ideas have been actioned (there is now an all-weather pitch as well as a multi-use games area on the school site, although these are mostly left empty while lessons happen at Stoke Lodge). It’s fair to say that we don’t know what the equivalent plan now would look like. But it’s absolutely clear that Cotham will always be seeking to develop Stoke Lodge to the school’s commercial advantage (we know from the PE staff’s comments (click here) that it won’t be an educational advantage).

That’s why the TVG is vital to protect this important open space as we know it. Cotham is reluctant to admit that it doesn’t want the TVG because of the impact on its development ambitions, although the Headteacher let that slip in her witness statement to TVG1. That’s why Cotham ran with the ‘Ofsted requires a fence’ argument, but we know that this claim isn’t true. The school has been operating under a false flag; PE lessons at Stoke Lodge are not under threat from a TVG, but this important open space is certainly under threat of future development.
Fact-checking Cotham’s risk assessment

May 22nd, 2023
We’ve already talked about how Cotham School told parents and carers at the school, and officers at the Council, that it must have a fence at Stoke Lodge because ‘Ofsted requires a fence for safeguarding’ (click here) – and how Ofsted has made very clear that this isn’t true.

This week, we want to lay out the facts so that parents of Cotham School pupils can see for themselves that Village Green status for Stoke Lodge does not mean that Cotham will be deprived of its playing fields, despite the spin they may have been given on this in the past.

The school says it has a risk assessment that shows a fence is required, so let’s look more closely at that – and first of all, let’s pause to consider that Cotham School never carried out any risk assessment at Stoke Lodge (or at Coombe Dingle Sports Complex where it held most of its PE lessons) until 2014 despite having used the field since September 2000. But in early 2014, the school asked external consultants to carry out a feasibility study about building more classrooms at the school and about options for ‘upgrading’ Stoke Lodge. You can see that feasibility study here.

The report says several interesting things, including:

‘In terms of the Stoke Lodge Playing Field proposals… the study will need to result in a scheme to submit to get planning approval, noting that an application for “Village Green” status is currently under consideration by Bristol City Council and the expectation is that this status will be awarded.’

The options in Appendix G of the report set out two ways in which the field might be shared half and half with the community – perhaps envisaged as a negotiating stance. Most significantly, in terms of where the school might get grant funding from, the report notes that grants from the Academies Capital Maintenance Fund would be judged by various criteria and that, in terms of outputs to be achieved, ‘Areas of investment are likely to be prioritised towards Safeguarding projects and Improvements to play and sport spaces.’

This report was received by Cotham’s governors on 24 March 2014. Sandra Fryer had also asked the facilities manager at the time, Nathan Allen, and another staff member to go and carry out a risk assessment, which they did that same day – you can see this here. In the knowledge that 50% of the ‘score’ for a funding grant depended on showing that there was a safeguarding need or an improvement to sport spaces, the risk assessment purported to discover… a safeguarding need at a sports space. What a coincidence!

The risks identified were: (a) dog mess on the playing area ‘due in part to a lack of sufficient dog waste bins’; (b) dog attack, stating that ‘interaction between dogs and students playing sport happens on a regular basis’ and (c) ‘Violence & Aggression from trespassers gaining access to the playing fields’. Of these, the risk of dog attack was rated ‘high’ meaning that use of the playing fields should cease until the risk was mitigated – although in fact governing body minutes show that the school had ceased using the fields four months previously, preferring to use the facilities at Coombe Dingle.

On being asked about the incidence of dog attacks at Stoke Lodge, the school has confirmed that there have not been any – nor any incidents of violence and aggression from trespassers. But the risk assessment bolstered the school’s position for funding applications as well as giving it leverage in pushing for a fence.

What did other experts make of the risk assessment? One professional has commented that it was foolish to fence off such a large area – there is no point from which the whole area can be monitored, and indeed locals have frequently observed teenagers playing football on the pitches at the bottom end, while teachers are blissfully unaware of this at the top end of the field. Even on sports days, the school never uses the whole site at any one time.

The Council’s health and safety expert also reviewed the risk assessment, and said the following (click here):
- Other schools address the risk of dog mess by a visual sweep of the playing fields prior to use.
- As for dog attacks – ‘do we have any evidence of attack’? ‘Interaction does not mean attack. My general understanding of dogs and balls is their desire to join in the play/activity as opposed to attacking staff/students. Plus I would suggest that there are already ‘Existing Controls’ being the staff on duty, supervising the students. They can politely request that dog owners remove their dogs… The majority of law-abiding citizens of Bristol would respond to such a sensible request.’
- ‘I have no knowledge of any acts of Violence and very few ‘exchanged words or aggression’ towards staff on any playing fields across Bristol’.
So there you have it – this overcooked risk assessment was produced ‘to order’ as a way of bolstering the school’s case for grant funding. It overstated the risks, and it completely left out the obvious fact that pupils are not left out there unsupervised.

The risk assessment was then used as an all-purpose tool to push through the school’s desire for a fence. In fact Cotham’s headteacher, Jo Butler, used the risk assessment as part of her witness statement to the 2016 TVG public inquiry, stressing her certainty that Ofsted required Stoke Lodge to be fenced and (most shockingly of all) even referencing the shooting of 16 children and their teacher at Dunblane Primary School in 1996 in support of her claim.

But Ofsted says they’ve got it wrong. Cotham was proceeding on a false assumption, and that means it has spent huge amounts of time, effort and money in pursuit of a fence it wants, but doesn’t need.
The smoking gun: seeking a landowner statement

May 15th, 2023

You may have picked up that there have been a number of issues about Freedom of Information requests relating to Stoke Lodge – most recently, requests relating to discussions about a ‘landowner statement’. What does that have to do with the TVG applications?

A landowner statement is a mechanism under the Commons Act 2006 that allows landowners to protect land from registration as a town or village green and from claims for additional rights of way. The landowner makes an application to deposit a statement and a map of the land, and there is a process requiring public notices to be displayed to let people know about the statement and object if appropriate. The sole purpose of a landowner statement is to ‘bring to an end any period of recreational use ‘as of right’ over land’.

If the statement is deposited before there has been 20 years’ recreational use of the land ‘as of right’, it prevents users obtaining the 20 years they need to apply for TVG registration. But if recreational use has already taken place over the land for 20 years or more, then the deposit of a statement triggers a one year grace period in which an application may be made – and the public notice process is likely to make people aware of the need to take action.

No landowner statement has been made in relation to Stoke Lodge Playing Fields – that’s not the issue. But we know that Cotham School was asking Bristol City Council to make one before these TVG applications went in. Now, if you think that ‘as of right’ use doesn’t exist, or has already been ended more than a year ago, then you don’t need one of these (and equally there’s no particular risk in making one – it’s just not relevant). We know from the notes of a meeting between Council officers and the School dated 21 September 2018 (after the TVG2 application had been lodged) that there had been discussions between the school and the Council about making a statement. The notes (apparently made by/on behalf of Gary Collins, Head of Development Management) record ‘Landowner statement – where is this? Is this still relevant’.

So Cotham School thought a landowner statement was necessary – and one reason why the Council might have been cautious about making one would have been the prospect that it would trigger another TVG application because 20 years’ of ‘as of right’ use was already in the bag. And that means that neither Cotham School nor the Council thought that the Avon signs had been effective to prohibit informal use (at least during this application period, from 1998 onwards). So it’s very relevant for these applications to find out what was happening in those discussions.

Here comes the really shady bit. The Council initially refused to disclose anything relating to those discussions and claimed that any FOI request relating to Stoke Lodge Playing Fields was automatically vexatious and could be refused. Just to be sure, they refused other requests that were nothing to do with Stoke Lodge as well (something that Private Eye picked up on last summer).

On 22 August 2022 the Information Commissioner ruled that the Council’s ‘blanket approach’ to requests relating to Stoke Lodge is not a proper use of the relevant Freedom of Information Act exemption. However, it turned out that even after that decision, the Council refused a separate third party request about landowner statements on the same basis, despite the ICO’s ruling. So then we asked a question at Full Council about officers not complying with the ICO’s decision, and you can see what happened here.

The Mayor implied in his response that the Council would comply with the ICO’s decision in relation to fresh requests, so we made another request for the same information. You can see how that’s going here.

Essentially, the Council is saying that it no longer thinks that asking for this information is vexatious, but that there are multiple other reasons for refusing it – they just hadn’t thought of them before. The Council is refusing to disclose information that is clearly relevant to the TVG applications. Why would it do that?

The underlying point is this: there would be no need to consider making such a statement, and Cotham School and the Council would not have been discussing it, if they considered that ‘as of right’ use didn’t exist. So even if BCC carries on refusing to disclose anything about this, the fact that those discussions happened gives the game away – they know we’re right about ‘as of right’ use, they just don’t want to admit it.