Category: Signs

It’s just about the signs

Jun 28th, 2023

After years of argument, the one thing that the decision on the Stoke Lodge TVG applications is likely to come down to today is the signs – two signs put up by Avon County Council in the mid-1980s. Here’s why the Inspector’s conclusion on the signs is wrong:

First, he said in TVG1 that they were prohibitory and refused to revisit that conclusion despite the evidence having radically changed. The signs are clearly a warning about trespass, but they go on to envisage that people will be using the land for a range of activities. Previous cases have said that signs like this are ambiguous and ineffective. The Inspector refused to consider this because, he said, the High Court had upheld his interpretation of the signs. Then, in his final Note, he said:

But he didn’t go back to put that mistake right.

Secondly, he refused to consider whether all the evidence of inconsistent conduct by the Council and the School indicated acquiescence, because he said the signs overrode all that. But the Winterburn case is very clear that the landowner must ‘object and continue to object’. The Inspector agrees with us that Avon wasn’t objecting to use at any time after January 1990. So whether he’s wrong on Winterburn really matters, as he himself now admits.

And we’re not the only ones who think he’s wrong: the Open Spaces Society agrees with us that while signs can make clear to users that the landowner objects to their use, they will only be effective if they are ‘sufficient to make the position clear to those using the land. This will be a question of fact in each individual case.’ If everyone is continuing to use the land anyway and the landowner is perfectly happy with them doing so, then there is no clear objection.

The third thing that the Inspector refused to consider was whether two signs were enough, on a 23 acre field with multiple access points and residential gates, to make any objection clear. He said he saw no basis for considering that issue, even though it was the exact reason why the Committee disagreed with him in 2016, and the Council spent the next two years arguing before the High Court that there weren’t enough signs. Why did he blinker himself like that?

The leading legal textbook on TVG law makes the issue very clear:

That’s really important: ‘A notice will not be effective unless it should have been seen by the users of the land… If access is available to the land at more than one point, and there is only an isolated notice [Ed: or two!], those entering and exiting the land from the access where there is no notice will not have been prevented from using the land as of right.’

Nobody ever suggested to the householders with back gates onto the field that they couldn’t use them. So their use was ‘as of right’. There was never any sign at multiple other popular access points to the field – including Cheyne Road and the arboretum side of the main entrance. The signs were put in locations where school and club users were likely to see them, but not informal users. And a significant number didn’t see them – so their use was as of right.

That’s the key issue for today’s meeting. The only issue that matters.
Insufficient signs and inconsistent behaviour: where the Inspector’s report goes wrong (2)

Jun 22nd, 2023

The main reason the Inspector gives for rejecting the applications is to do with the Avon County Council signs, based on his interpretation of the Winterburn case. But, in his final Note, the Inspector now admits that he may have misinterpreted the Winterburn case, by assuming that the signs were effective despite our evidence that the Council and the School acted inconsistently with them for 20 years. In fact, he says if he’s wrong on Winterburn then TVG1 should have been registered back in 2016 (so the last 7 years of stress, expense and fence need never have happened).

Let’s take a moment to think how extraordinary it is that, having written his report (supposedly having carefully considered all the evidence), the Inspector wrote a further Note saying he might have got the key issue wrong and it’s up to the Committee to decide, based on the facts. That is really remarkable, and means the report simply can’t be accepted as it stands.

We provided a mountain of evidence of the Council and the School acting inconsistently with the Avon signs, and this was not contested by the School or the Council. The Inspector’s position seems to be that if there is a sign then even 100 years of subsequent landowners being happy with informal use would not be sufficient to overcome the effect of that sign. Our expert barrister disagrees, as does the Open Spaces Society which said the following (obviously the OSS hasn’t been able to see the report because it was confidential until a couple of days ago):

The Winterburn case says that the landowner must ‘object and continue to object’ to the use. You can look this up for yourself here (see paragraph 37). It is completely clear that there was no continuing objection in our case. Even the Inspector accepted that from January 1990 Avon CC was not objecting to use of the field.

So the Committee will need to decide whether the Inspector is correct in his conclusion – in the context of the ongoing actions of the Council and the School accepting informal use, were the signs ‘sufficient to make the position clear to those using the land‘? ‘This will be a question of fact in each individual case.’

And actually, it’s even simpler than that. If the Committee considers that two signs are not enough to make an objection to use clear to everyone using the field, on a 23 acre site with over 30 formal and informal entrances, then the land must be registered as a TVG. That’s what the PROWG Committee thought in December 2016, it’s what Bristol City Council argued before the High Court in 2017, and the Inspector has now said this is a matter of fact for the Committee to decide. Take a look below and see what you think! Two signs may have been sufficient for the small car park in the Winterburn case (shown to scale, bottom left) but are two signs enough on a playing field that is 200 times larger? Has any objection been made clear when no one ever suggested to the householders with back gates onto the field, that they shouldn’t use them? Is any objection clear when the signs are left over from a previous landowner, in the mid-80s, and no one bothered to update the irrelevant wording on them?

We’d say clearly not – no one bothered to make an objection clear because no one was actually objecting! Remember that as far back as January 1990 Avon was talking about putting in a kissing gate at the Cheyne Road entrance – no indication of any objection there! The evidence speaks for itself – unfortunately the Inspector wasn’t listening.
How Cotham School sparked a TVG application

Jun 16th, 2023

We’ve looked at what was going on behind the scenes in summer 2018 between Cotham School, Mike Jackson and Gary Collins – but what was happening in public?

First, when Cotham published its proposed fence plan in May 2018, Gary Collins told the school in no uncertain terms that it couldn’t do that without a planning application. And on 13 July 2018 BCC sent the school a formal letter confirming that. It also said that any application by the school must recognise community use of the land and mitigate any restriction of public access. So from the community’s point of view, there would be a planning application before any fence could go up – we would be consulted, and a range of factors including accessibility and discriminatory impacts; wildlife and trees; the heritage status of the land and the maintenance of the perimeter walkways would all be considered.

On 20 July 2018 Darren Jones MP hosted a mediation meeting between the community and the school, at which compromise solutions and alternatives to fencing were discussed and the school participants committed to considering these over the summer.

But then on 24 July 2018, with no warning (including to the Council), Cotham School removed the Council’s existing signs from the land and replaced them with its own, renaming Stoke Lodge as ‘Cotham School Playing Field’ and claiming it as their private property with no unauthorised access.

Obviously, things kicked off at that point. Here is Darren Jones’ response:

We wrote to all Councillors that same day, asking for urgent intervention. We said:

‘We are very disappointed that, having attended a meeting only a few days ago to discuss ways of resolving the situation, the school has taken this action, which it had clearly decided on before that meeting. This indicates a lack of good faith in its conduct towards the community and to Darren Jones who facilitated the meeting, as well as a disregard for the Council’s wishes…

As a community we have considered the possibility of making a second TVG application… the school’s challenge to the Council’s earlier decision to award TVG status resulted in significant costs in time and money for both the Council and the local community and out of respect for our Council’s resources, our thinking has been that we would not make a second TVG application at this time. However, if the school does not wish to work in partnership with the community we will have no option but to review our position.’

It shouldn’t therefore have come as a shock that when Cotham showed up to the next mediation meeting on 14 September, saying that they had not even bothered to look at our alternative proposals over the summer, we decided to act. The school’s conduct in that meeting was particularly belligerent – no doubt because they now felt they had Mike Jackson’s private backing (click here). We were told that unless we closed down our Facebook page, stopped making information requests and stopped campaigning, the school would put a bigger fence around even more of the playing field and never unlock the gates.

Here’s how Darren Jones described that meeting:

That’s correct – if Cotham’s lead governor had been less focussed on backroom negotiations and power play, and had engaged with mediation in good faith, then perhaps the TVG application might not have been made following that meeting. And if Cotham had not tried to evade normal planning processes, and had just made an application following the same rules that apply to everyone else, the TVG application could not have been made, precisely because of the planning process. Cotham’s own conduct both provoked and enabled these applications.
‘As of right’ use: it started, but did it finish?

Jun 8th, 2023

One of the issues that the parties have been arguing about in this TVG process is whether and when ‘as of right’ use of the field ended. Obviously neither the School nor the Council would be arguing about this at all if they thought ‘as of right’ use wasn’t going on – what they’re claiming is that use became contentious at some point from 2016 onwards, because that would mean a full 20 year period couldn’t be established.

You may remember that in July 2018 Cotham School abruptly removed the old Avon County Council signs from the site (without asking BCC first) and put up its own signs. In its objection to TVG2, Cotham told us that the new signs were intended to ‘restrict access to the site by members of the public’ and to ‘render use contentious’ – so the whole point of putting the signs up was to try to change the situation from ‘as of right’ to ‘not as of right’. That’s what they thought they were doing on 24 July 2018. The Council agreed with that interpretation, in its objection to TVG2.

The signs were very controversial at the time, and the Council’s planning enforcement team opened an investigation into the school’s actions. The issue came up at the school’s meeting with Gary Collins on 3 August 2018:

Clearly the barrister thought ‘as of right’ use had not ended, so the school should put up signs and/or fencing to achieve that. That means Cotham School, its legal advisers and the Council all thought that ‘as of right’ use was going on right up to 24 July 2018. And the local community objected to the new signs very strongly, so they didn’t think ‘as of right’ use had ended at any point before that, either. At least we all agree on something!

Why does this matter? Because Cotham is now trying to claim that ‘as of right’ use ended earlier than this, possibly because of the public inquiry in 2016. Or possibly because of its proposal to put up a fence in May 2018 (but the Council objected to that) or possibly because of the PROWG decision in June 2018 (but that only actually decided that use was not ‘as of right’ between April 1991 and April 1996).

The fact that Cotham finds it so difficult to pin down a date when it thinks ‘as of right’ use ended is a pretty clear indication that it didn’t actually happen, and that no such message could possibly have been communicated to users of the field. It’s clear that the school was trying to end ‘as of right’ use on 24 July 2018 and that this is what its advisers were telling it to do – but of course whether the signs were valid and effective would depend on whether it had power under the lease to restrict informal use and whether it had put up enough, clearly-worded, signs. Since Cotham had essentially copied the wording of the ambiguous Avon signs and put them up in the same three places, and since its use was subject to community use anyway, the community never thought the signs were valid.

Because it thought ‘as of right’ use was still ongoing, the school was also pursuing its request for a landowner statement, which is another smoking gun for the TVG applications.

In autumn 2018 Council officers waved through two of the new signs as ‘advertisements’ but required the school to seek planning permission for the third. That application was rejected by Development Control Committee B on 19 December 2018 with Councillors saying the following:

The councillors clearly weren’t keen on what the school had done: note the comment that ‘planning consent cannot be used to restrict or prevent free public access to the land’ – but the TVG3 application relates to a period ending just before the signs were put up, so we haven’t needed to spend extra legal funds arguing this specific point.

The issue, in the end, is that since neither Cotham School nor the Council thought ‘as of right’ use had ended before the signs went up, there’s no reason to think that local residents should have thought that. After all, the school was paying an expert barrister to analyse the position for them, and he thought ‘as of right’ use was still ongoing! This argument against registering the land as a TVG just doesn’t work.
The Avon signs: what were they meant to do?

Jun 7th, 2023

We talked previously about all the ways in which the signs that Avon County Council put up at Stoke Lodge were ambiguous and unclear (click to read more). That obviously affects whether or not the signs were effective, but there’s another question – what did Avon intend them to mean? What did it think it was doing when it put them up?

We’ve done a lot of research in the archives and found some really detailed information about this, including minutes of the Avon Education Committee from September 1982 stating that ‘the Authority, in recognition of increased public demands for facilities, has for some time tacitly accepted that its playing fields in particular can be utilised by the local community’. That’s a perfect example of acquiescence in public ‘as of right’ use.

There’s evidence that signs similar to the ones at Stoke Lodge were put up by Avon County Council at other playing fields around the county, partly to provide a warning about powers under new legislation introduced in 1982 to control nuisance activities on playing fields, and partly to encourage greater use of underused Council facilities via pitch bookings etc.

We can also see from committee minutes that after the Council put up these signs at Kensington Meadows Playing Fields in Bath in 1983/4, the activities listed on the sign had continued anyway. The committee was told that ‘the general view of local residents… appeared to be that Kensington Meadows was a public open space to which access should be freely available at all times and for all purposes, including local festivals, model plane flying, motor cycling and the exercise of dogs’. Note the similarities between the wording in these minutes and the wording on the signs!

The committee considered whether to do anything more about the situation, but resolved to take no action. There’s no reason to think that the Council’s attitude would be any different at Stoke Lodge – you have to assume it would act in a consistent way across all the playing fields it was responsible for. The signs may have been an attempt to discourage nuisance activities, but if the activities continued anyway, no action was taken. No-one was ever prosecuted or even asked to leave.

Avon’s attitude of tacit acceptance was the same after the signs as before the signs – that’s why we have so much evidence over the years of both Avon County Council and Bristol City Council acquiescing in informal use (read more here). Here, for example, is an extract from a letter to a local resident by Avon’s Director of Education dated 4 January 1990, about access at the Cheyne Road entrance to the playing field:

This gate was never actually installed, because right around this time education law changed (read more here) and Avon County Council formally resolved that it had no policy at all on the informal use of playing fields. But it’s clear that (as the Public Rights of Way and Greens Committee said in December 2016) the Council was sending, at best, mixed messages with its signs, because it didn’t actually object to informal use at all. And mixed messages aren’t enough to end ‘as of right’ use.
The 12-year journey towards a TVG

May 31st, 2023

Bristol City Council’s TVG webpage tells you that the process from applying to register land as a Town or Village Green to the final decision will take ‘up to a year’.

The first TVG application for Stoke Lodge Playing Fields was made by David Mayer on behalf of Save Stoke Lodge Parkland in March 2011. Here we are, more than 12 years later, with a date in the diary for the Public Rights of Way and Greens (PROWG) Committee to consider the current TVG applications on 28 June 2023. 12 years rather than 12 months – what on earth happened?!

At first the TVG1 process ran fairly smoothly – the Commons Registration Authority (the bit of BCC that looks after TVG applications) appointed an Inspector to consider the application – this happens where the Council is also the landowner, to avoid a conflict of interest. The Inspector recommended in 2013 that the land should be registered because all the legal tests were met and it was a ‘classic case of acquiescence’ by the Council as landowner – in the period from 1991 to 2011 Avon County Council and then BCC had known about large-scale informal use of the playing fields and had never objected to it.

But then the Council raised the issue of the old Avon County Council signs on the site, and the Inspector decided that a public inquiry was required after all. That was held in the summer of 2016, and later that year the Inspector recommended that, because of a recent case called Winterburn v Bennett, the land should not be registered after all. He considered that this case had changed the law so that if informal use continued despite clear and sufficient signs put up by a landowner objecting to that use, it could not be ‘as of right’. There’s more about this case here.

But the PROWG Committee disagreed in December 2016, and said that Avon County Council didn’t put up enough signs to make clear to everyone that it objected to informal use – and that Avon had sent mixed messages through its conduct, so it hadn’t communicated a clear objection. The PROWG Committee decided to register the land.

Cotham School objected to this and took the Council to court by way of judicial review. Bristol City Council defended the Committee’s decision, arguing that two signs were not enough on a site of this size. The High Court said that the Committee’s decision that Stoke Lodge is very different to the Winterburn car park 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 published minutes failed to do). The school lost on 3 out of the 5 arguments it made, but the court agreed with the other two: that the minutes didn’t show the PROWG Committee’s decision-making process and didn’t give adequate reasons for departing from the Inspector’s recommendation. Because of that, the Committee’s decision was quashed.

But the precise conclusion reached by the Inspector was that the Avon County Council signs had made use not ‘as of right’ up to April 1996 (when Avon was abolished) – after that, Bristol City Council was the landowner, and so an idea was born… since the use of the land by the community had continued unchanged and unchallenged right up to summer 2018, why not make a new application for registration, one that started in 1998 and would be entirely within Bristol City Council’s period as landowner?

And so the story continued…
The 2010 Cabinet Briefing Note

May 17th, 2023
If only there was a really easy way to know what Bristol City Council thought about ‘as of right’ use of Stoke Lodge during our TVG application period… oh wait, there is! There’s a whole Briefing Note to Cabinet from April 2010 that lays it all out. The note is written in the context of proposals that were made to develop sports facilities at each of Stoke Lodge Playing Fields and Purdown, including fencing off the land (see our earlier Timeline post).

The recommendation of the report is that public access should be maintained where possible. It says that the Stoke Lodge and Purdown development schemes have been frozen ‘until a decision on the future of open access to school playing fields is made’ – which obviously tells us that open access was happening in practice at that time.

Describing the proposals, the report refers to ‘Stoke Lodge Playing Fields – the proposed exclusion of public access to school playing pitches’ – so it’s very clear that this exclusion had not already happened, for example because of the old Avon County Council signs or BCC’s installation of the 2009 sign just 10 months previously. In fact the report says that ‘The playing field is currently unfenced and allows unfettered community access’. This proves that the Inspector was wrong to conclude in TVG1 that the Council put up that 2009 sign intending it to refer to the playing fields.

The Briefing Note also sets out the correct legal position under education legislation (that the use of the playing fields was under the control of the relevant school’s governing body, subject to any directions given by the local education authority) and details several aspects on which the Council had obtained specific advice from an expert barrister. It makes clear that the Council was aware of ongoing informal use of Stoke Lodge. It states that:
- The expert legal advice given to the Council in December 2009 was that playing fields should remain open to public access unless governing bodies decide otherwise and that the Council ‘should seek to persuade’ school governing bodies ‘that they themselves should willingly adopt a policy of open access’. In other words the Council had clearly neither permitted use by making a Direction that would bind schools (although it had the power to do that), nor had it restricted use – it was acquiescing to informal use by local inhabitants and seeking to encourage schools to do the same.
- In relation to possible TVG applications, due to recent court decisions landowners wishing to avoid land becoming a TVG ‘now need to proactively take steps to keep people [off] their land to prevent future registration’ (this is also referred to in the report as ‘active steps to exclude recreational trespassers’).
- Stoke Lodge ‘is currently unfenced and allows unfettered community access’.
So, having taken legal advice, the Council’s clear position was that informal use was not restricted in any way (it was ‘unfettered’) – so neither the 2009 BCC sign nor the earlier Avon signs were effective to prevent ‘as of right’ use.

Remember, this Briefing Note was written more than 20 years after 23 January 1990, which was the date when Avon County Council made a Direction indicating that it was not imposing any policy on informal access to playing fields. Given the lack of any objection to informal use by Fairfield School or Cotham School in the interim, that’s already 20 years of ‘as of right’ use in the bag. And the BCC Cabinet knew it had power to end that use, but did nothing – because in fact it was in favour of shared use continuing, as long as the relevant school did not object.

And when the Committee’s December 2016 decision to register Stoke Lodge as a TVG was considered in the High Court, the Council’s position was that:
- Given that Cotham School took the lease after the [2011] TVG application had been made and that shared use was then being carried on, the school was aware of the position and potential implications [of registration as a town or village green].
- Registration would reflect what has been the position on the land for at least the twenty-year period prior to the application.
- ‘It appears that the land has been used for a very long period for recreational purposes by the local community and the importance of the protection of recreational uses that arise from [TVG] registration should not be overlooked’.
Case closed? You would think so, but stay tuned…
13 ways the Council and Cotham School showed they didn’t object to informal use

May 16th, 2023
Before the signs went up in the mid-1980s, we know that Avon County Council had a policy of ‘tacitly accepting’ informal recreational use of its playing fields. Did the signs mean that the policy had changed? No, our evidence shows that wasn’t the case – both here and on playing fields elsewhere in the County, the Council continued to tacitly accept informal use.

Even if you think the signs communicated a clear message prohibiting use (which apparently is not how anyone ever understood them – and click here for our post on ambiguity), and even if you think two signs is enough on a 26 acre field with many formal and informal entrance points (click here for our post on sufficiency), you have to consider the impact of years and years of actions by the Council and Cotham School that were inconsistent with those signs. Those actions meant that the signs weren’t sending any clear message at all, which would mean that the signs weren’t effective to stop informal use being ‘as of right’. Here are some examples:
- In 1987 the gate at the West Dene entrance was locked by a new groundskeeper. In response to public complaints the Council ordered it to be unlocked to allow continued access at that point.
- In early January 1990 the Council went on record with a public statement, reported in the local press, that there were concerns about motorcycles accessing the field at the Cheyne Road entrance, so it was planning to install a kissing gate. That would have given unrestricted access to the entire field, from the main entrance at the lower end of the field (i.e. there was no concern about pedestrian access – although the gate was never actually installed). Click here to see the press cutting.
- On 23 January 1990 Avon made a formal Direction that, subject to providing for ongoing adult education use, all other matters relating to the control of school premises were for the school governing body, not the council – so Avon clearly had no policy of objecting to informal use from this date (more than 8 years before the 20 year period for these applications began).
- In the early 1990s a large branch fell off the veteran oak tree at the Cheyne Road entrance. The TVG1 public inquiry heard evidence that a groundskeeper had used a vehicle to push it so that it blocked the entrance – and was told by his boss to move it back into the field so that the public could still access the land (although it was left in a position that would make access for motorcycles difficult). It’s still there today.
- The Council’s evidence in TVG1 included this statement: ‘Staff were certainly aware that the land was used by the public for informal recreation. Reasonable use was never challenged’. That’s the Council’s own evidence.
- In the period from 1 September 2000 to 1 September 2011, Cotham School as the user of the land did nothing to make any protest clear. It repeatedly acknowledged over a period of years in formal legal contracts with the University of Bristol in relation to the management of the playing fields that ‘the site is open, at present, to the public and dogs’.
- In April 2010, the Cabinet Briefing Note recorded that there was ‘unfettered public access’ to the playing fields (we’ll talk about this in more detail soon).
- In September 2010, the Cabinet Member for Children and Young Peoples’ Services formally confirmed at a Neighbourhood Partnership meeting that the playing fields would remain unfenced with open access for all ‘as of right’ (again, more on this soon).
- Throughout the whole period, there was day to day contact between groundskeepers, school staff, club hirers and members of the public – many witnesses in the TVG1 public inquiry gave evidence of this, as did many of the 166 witnesses who gave statements for the current applications. In other words what was ‘visible’ on the ground included ongoing daily informal use that was unchallenged by groundskeepers or school staff (in fact witnesses gave evidence of frequent friendly conversations and interactions).
- In 2011, when the lease was being negotiated, Cotham School asked for an indemnity from the Council in relation to trees and boundary walls. Its solicitor stated that ‘excluding the playing field use, this land seems to me to be essentially open amenity land within a residential area’. The Council didn’t contradict him, and it agreed ‘a much reduced repair clause… which varies substantially from the Academy model’ in recognition of that open amenity use, as well as providing the indemnity. So the school got (and still gets) financial benefits in recognition of the shared use of the playing fields.
- The lease was signed on 31 August 2011, recording formally that the school’s rights as tenant are ‘subject to all existing rights and use of the Property, including use by the community’.
- On 5 October 2011, the TVG1 applicant wrote to Cotham’s head teacher and chair of governors, commenting on the lease between Bristol City Council as landlord, Cotham School as tenant and the community as ongoing users ‘as of right’. The letter refers to maintaining ‘clear dialogue regarding the ongoing use of the Parkland by both your Academy and the Community, in the harmonious way currently enjoyed by both interested parties’. The headteacher’s response says: ‘Thank you for your letter concerning Stoke Lodge and your express wish to maintain our close and harmonious relationship. We completely echo your sentiments…’. He didn’t quibble with the statement that there was ‘as of right’ use in a ‘harmonious way’ – it was accepted by both parties.
- In the 2016 public inquiry, Cotham School’s Chair of Governors gave evidence that the School had been content with ongoing informal use of the Land in the period since 2000 and this was why the school had not put up any signs. That’s the school’s own evidence.
None of this evidence was contested by Cotham School or by the Council. How could they? It’s all documented. Well over 20 years of continuous informal use by the public for lawful sports and pastimes, without force, without secrecy and without permission. That’s ‘as of right’.
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.
The 2009 sign – not another one…

May 13th, 2023

We’ve talked a lot about the Avon County Council signs, because those were a big point in the TVG1 Inspector’s report. But from mid-2009 there was another sign at Stoke Lodge, put up by BCC. It seems that the Avon sign that previously stood in the car park of the Adult Learning Centre had disappeared at some point in the mid-2000s (so instead of two Avon signs that counted for this purpose, there was only one).

It’s important to remember that Bristol City Council at this point did not have power to control the use of the land except by making a formal ‘Direction’. And schools had control of their own budgets, with a detailed annual schedule setting out what costs fell to schools and what would be covered by the local authority. For example, minor repairs were for schools to deal with out of their own budget; major capital projects were for the local authority. And that schedule states clearly that external signage is on the school’s dime, not the Council’s.

This mid-2009 sign was mounted on a single pole (unlike the Avon signs) and until the play park was built it was located on the edge of the drive (close to where a car park sign is now). Later it was moved further up and to the left of the drive, on the grass, still mounted on a single pole – which meant it swivelled about, facing in different directions at different times.

This sign is different from the Avon signs. Under the Bristol City Council logo it said:

This sign caused a lot of debate at the TVG1 public inquiry – did it relate to the playing fields or to the grounds of Stoke Lodge house? It refers to ‘grounds’ rather than ‘playing fields’ and says that requests should be made to the Divisional Director of Property and Local Taxation, not the Director of Education. In his TVG1 report, the Inspector decided that it related to the playing fields but that ‘by erecting this one sign Bristol City Council could not reasonably have concluded that it had made it sufficiently clear that it was not acquiescing in the continued use of the land for recreational purposes by local users’.

What the Inspector didn’t know in the TVG1 inquiry – because neither the school nor the Council told him – was that it was outside the Council’s powers to be putting up signs on school playing fields. That was a matter for the school itself, and it’s clear from the correspondence around the commissioning of this sign that the school wasn’t involved in it. So if the Council put the sign up, it must have related to the land they still had power to exercise control over – the grounds of the Adult Learning Centre, not the playing fields. And that ties in with Cotham School’s own evidence – remember that Sandra Fryer, the Chair of Governors, specifically gave evidence that the community’s use of the field was satisfactory to the school and that was why they hadn’t put any signs up.

You won’t find a sign in this spot any more – in 2018 Cotham School tried to replace it with one of their own, and (after local protests) had to make a planning application to try to retain it. That application was rejected, with Councillors on the Development Control Committee making clear that ‘the sign, by virtue of its nature and the wording it contains, would be harmful to amenity…’ , and that ‘Planning consent cannot be used to restrict or prevent free public access to the land’. And so say all of us.