Category: Why it matters

Did she or didn’t she?

Aug 3rd, 2025

One of the more dramatic moments of the High Court trial earlier this year was the declaration by Cotham School’s Headteacher, Jo Butler, that she had never said that Ofsted required schools to fence their playing fields. It caused quite a ripple in the courtroom. She confirmed multiple times that she had never said that either Ofsted or the Department for Education required perimeter fencing, whether for schools generally or for Cotham in particular.

It’s surprising, then, that so many people have thought over the years that this is exactly what she, and others at the school, were saying. A local resident wrote to Ofsted in 2018 to check directly with them; Darren Jones MP contacted both Ofsted and the DfE; the local press reported the school’s statement that a fence was ‘the “only reasonable solution” and an Ofsted requirement’.

So did everyone completely misunderstand what the school was saying? Or did everyone think exactly what the school intended them to think? Let’s see what Jo Butler has said over the years, starting with her evidence to the 2016 TVG1 public inquiry.

First, she cited an example of a primary school which she says was judged ‘inadequate’ in 2014 due to the site not being secure – but note that this is about the actual school site and access to the school building, not about playing fields 3 miles away. And shall we look at what that Ofsted report actually said?

That… isn’t about perimeter fencing around playing fields. Nor was it the only reason for the school being judged inadequate – you can look the report up for yourself and see that the school was judged inadequate at the time on every measure (no shade to Bisham School, which is now rated ‘Good’).

Next she referenced Crowstone School at which, again, the security of the school buildings had apparently been found to be unsatisfactory. This was a private prep school with 36 pupils, so possibly not a great comparator (do we hear the sound of a barrel being scraped?). Then she referred to Newmarket Academy, which she said had been placed into special measures in October 2013. We’ve talked more about this school elsewhere, and how the headteacher there worked very collaboratively with the local community. However, what Ms Butler takes from the Newmarket example is this:

The local Newmarket press at the time reported that Ofsted had rated ‘the quality of teaching, behaviour and leadership and management as inadequate’. So putting up a perimeter fence around the main school site (and on-site playing field) was clearly not the action that brought the school out of special measures. But the core message here seems to be: ‘Cotham could be severely downgraded by Ofsted if we don’ t have a fence at Stoke Lodge’. If so, it’s not surprising that people (including, apparently, the Inspector at the time) understood it, in short, as ‘Ofsted requires a fence for safeguarding’.

It wasn’t just at the public inquiry, either – here are minutes from a meeting of Cotham’s Full Governing Body on 5 April 2017:

Now, if you look up either of the relevant Ofsted reports, you can easily see that the problems for each school were not the lack of a perimeter fence around their playing fields. Nor was a ‘requirement’ to ‘more effectively fence their playing fields’ mentioned anywhere in either report. And if you look up the press report mentioned, Ofsted provides a quote:

[Ofsted] said: “Inspectors look at a wide range of evidence when evaluating the effectiveness of safeguarding in schools, and they will not normally find safeguarding to be ineffective because of a single shortcoming, such as site security. We do not have particular expectations about how a school manages issues around site security, although we would expect such risks to be properly considered and managed. “

So the comments noted in governors’ minutes also seem rather misleading, don’t they?

What about communications to parents? In late 2016 the school campaigned for school parents to write letters opposing village green status at Stoke Lodge. Here’s the start of a template letter that was provided (we assume on the Head’s say-so):

And here’s the critical paragraph:

What do we think Cotham School parents were meant to understand and repeat? That Stoke Lodge ‘must’ be fenced off, because ‘this is an Ofsted requirement’? Clearly many did understand it exactly that way, and were probably surprised in 2018 when evidence started coming back from Ofsted that it wasn’t a requirement at all (read more about this here).

But there’s more: here’s an extract from the school’s own notes of a meeting on 21 May 2018 (which were intended to remain confidential):

At this meeting, Jo Butler informed the community members present that:

We don’t know what school she was referring to, but it’s more than clear from Ofsted’s handbook for Inspectors and multiple other Ofsted and DfE guidance that a school would not have been put into special measures because of a lack of fencing around their playing fields, particularly if those playing fields were 3 miles away from the main school site.

As we said two years ago (with remarkable foresight, as it turns out): ‘Claims may have been made by the school during the TVG application process that could not be repeated under oath in court’. And they weren’t repeated. Ms Butler very properly admitted that there is no requirement – from either Ofsted or the Department for Education – for perimeter fencing. But even while she was saying that in court, the school’s website was still designed to give a different impression. The following was published in May 2023 (and remains there at the time of writing):

You can read why this ‘Frequently Asked Question’ is more like a ‘Misleadingly Answered Question’ here – and note that when we asked the DfE about the document referred to by the school, it said:

Cotham School has never corrected the impression, built up over years of careful and not-so-careful wording, that Ofsted requires a fence. Ms Butler may never have said those precise words in that order – but we’ll leave it to everyone to make their own minds up about what the school intended everyone (public, press, parents, pupils) to think.

If perimeter fencing is not a ‘requirement’ (it isn’t), and Ofsted simply requires ‘reasonable and proportionate’ approaches to safeguarding (it does) then there is no ‘need’ or ‘necessity’ for a perimeter fence. Every parent teaches their children the difference between ‘needing’ and ‘wanting’. Cotham School wants a perimeter fence, that’s very clear. But it may not be able to have one at Stoke Lodge because of restrictions in the lease and the law (public rights of way) and other matters. And that’s ok, because as Ms Butler also admitted in court, other schools manage to safeguard pupils effectively on open access playing fields, and there’s no reason why her staff can’t do the same. Or Cotham could fence an area for its own use, within a larger open field in which pitch layouts aren’t impeded by fencing – that’s what they currently hire at Golden Hill, after all. Perhaps despite all the legal turmoil, a compromise is staring everyone in the face!
Invest to protect Stoke Lodge!

Sep 17th, 2024
On 16 September 2024 the local community packed out St Mary’s Church to hear why Stoke Lodge Village Green is under threat, and how we can protect it.

Many people had assumed it was all over, and were shocked to get our leaflet explaining that Cotham School is asking the High Court to remove our Village Green status. And they turned out in force to hear how they could help to defend this amazing legacy of protected green space for now and for future generations.

Around 300 people heard David Mayer, the TVG1 applicant, remind us of the history of how we got here, and then Kathy Welham’s powerful and poetic summary of why she loves Stoke Lodge – you can read her words on this link.

With a High Court date set for January 2025, this was the launch of a major fundraising campaign to cover our legal costs for the five day trial. And there was a Big Reveal: the UK’s oldest national conservation body, the Open Spaces Society, has pledged financial support for our case because it recognises the importance of upholding the registration of the land as a town or village green to protect the right of the local community to use and enjoy the land for recreation.

The backing of the Open Spaces Society is really significant for our cause, but we still have a task ahead of us to raise the rest of the funds needed. Cotham School is using its reserves of education money to pay for its litigation – we don’t have the luxury of those apparently deep pockets, so community members are digging really deep and making sacrifices to protect Stoke Lodge, its trees, wildlife and open green space, and to ensure access for all – including for the pupils of Cotham School. We want Stoke Lodge to be fully available for school, club and informal use, coexisting side by side as they have done for decades.

This is a rare opportunity to protect 23 acres of beautiful rolling parkland as a legacy for future generations. How can you help?
- Visit our donations page for details of all the different ways you can be part of creating this permanent legacy for everyone, for ever: https://stokelodgevg.co.uk/donations/
- Watch and share our video: https://youtu.be/wP0E8THSCEM
- Spread the word! On social media, on your street WhatsApp, over coffee with a friend – join us and be part of something amazing: securing the future of Stoke Lodge as a place for school PE lessons, club sports and informal use, for ever!
Why I love Stoke Lodge

Sep 17th, 2024

On 16 September 2024, around 300 members of the local community gathered at St Mary’s Stoke Bishop to hear about the ongoing campaign to defend Stoke Lodge Village Green. As part of that meeting Kathy Welham, whose application for Town or Village Green status was successfully registered last year, and who is now the second defendant in Cotham School’s legal challenge to the village green, spoke movingly about why she loves Stoke Lodge. Here’s what Kathy said:

What Stoke Lodge means to me and why we are fighting

One June evening 20 years ago I first saw Stoke Lodge. I came in under the huge old boundary oak at the end of Cheyne Road. Looking out under the dim tent of the branches, at the acres of bright green grass, and the trees, and the huge grey sky, I took a deep breath of the calm, spacious air. And whichever of the many entrances I use, I still do that before going out onto the Lodge.

So it means space, and quiet, and a bit of time to think, of now and then and who and when. And to look – maybe examine the red flowers on the tough top Turkey oak, as you cross from Cheyne Rd to Parry’s Lane, or on your way from Ebenezer Lane or West Dene to the shops, or the bus stop, or your Gran’s house, or the school.

Stoke Lodge is the hub of its community, criss-crossed by spokes of connections and daily trips, old footpaths that emerge like ghosts in a drought, but are in use all the year, joining up people’s lives, stitching together a shifting but palpable community.

You mightn’t know who you’ll meet today – but you’ll know them next time!

And there’s room to walk, or run, laps or steps, and have a kick about with your mates while your little sister goes on the swings, and your mum chats with someone from school. Room to be absorbed in what you’re doing or seeing, without interruptions, is so rare – so precious – so necessary. Not to be a wellness bore, but the improved health outcomes linked to close-by, walkable access to local green space have been calculated to save the NHS millions annually.

A drone’s eye view shows the parkland wrapped like a big green scarf round mellow, listed old Stoke Lodge House. This land, the original setting, was listed and protected alongside the House and the many important trees. Bristol City Council’s secretive, and still unexplained, removal of the parkland’s protection allowed Cotham Academy School to install fencing in breach of its lease. It caused as yet unquantified environmental damage.

Stoke Lodge was registered as a TVG in August 2023, ensuring public access, and protection of the land. The school is able to tap into public funding and its own reserves to challenge the registration, as you know. Its steadfast refusal to negotiate shared use of the land and stick to its lease is the reason we have no option but to fight their unlawful land grab. If we don’t, Stoke Lodge as it has been for so many years to so many people before us, will be gone. Lost to the community, its children and its children’s children; lost to the old trees whose roots are in the way of hard pitches and carparks. And the many birds, and foxes and badgers and bats and hedgehogs and woodmice and slow worms and myriad invertebrates – all lost in the floodlights and nets and traffic noise. And that would be irretrievable.

What a drone’s eye view also shows is that the Lodge’s original green wrap of land is now itself surrounded by extensive residential development. Since World War One, Stoke Bishop has turned from countryside to suburb, and by the millennium Stoke Lodge was the very last freely accessible Public Open Space here. Most of the green we can see on this side of the Downs is privately owned. And make no mistake, there are thousands of people who rely on Stoke Lodge, that our local council promised us would always be open to us for recreation, and never fenced. It’s also a functioning link in the green chain that joins this suburb up to the Downs, and to Blaise, and on to Kingsweston. We are fighting for the wildlife, the historic trees of Stoke Lodge, the countless people for whom Stoke Lodge’s green and community space is a lifeline, and for the children of Bristol and their children – very much including the children of Cotham Academy School, who should be using the playing fields still.

We’re fighting because Stoke Lodge is irreplaceable and on our watch we aim to keep it safe from the destruction and commercialisation Cotham School has said it intends.
A new Village Green! What does that mean?

Aug 22nd, 2023

Stoke Lodge Playing Field is the UK’s newest Village Green. Registration is a very significant event, crowning years of commitment by our community to safeguarding open public access to this much-loved and historic parkland. Registration means it will be safe from development for ever.

There is no national database of registered greens, although the Open Spaces Society estimates that there are around 3650 of them in England and about 220 in Wales, covering about 8150 and 620 acres respectively. From those figures you can see that the average size is just 2-3 acres, although some are huge and some are tiny (like the little green island on Bramble Drive in BS9 which is 0.01 of an acre). They take many different forms, including a working quayside in Essex (despite the lack of any ‘green’ at all), and the area around the war memorial in Westbury-on-Trym. An elongated stretch of the Novers Common Village Green provides important additional protection to an ancient hedgerow along Novers Hill.

Many of the UK’s larger village greens were created in the 1960s and 70s following changes in legislation, and it’s fairly rare these days for a new village green of this size (around 22+ acres) to be created, although it does happen – in late 2022 North Somerset Council voluntarily registered a former golf course on the coast in Portishead, to save it from development. At 23 acres, Frampton-on-Severn has a slightly larger registered green than Stoke Lodge but this has several roads running through it. Closer to home, it might come as a surprise that 100+ acre partly-wooded Kingweston Down is a village green rather than common land or parkland. But in terms of more ‘traditional’ village greens, Stoke Lodge ranks among the largest undivided greens in the South West, as well as being the newest. It has certainly been one of the hardest fought-for!

The rollercoaster journey to have Stoke Lodge registered began with an application made in March 2011. Over the subsequent 12 years the journey has included a public inquiry, a judicial review, two further applications and finally a decision by Bristol City Council’s Public Rights of Way and Greens Committee on 28 June 2023, that the legal test for registration was met at Stoke Lodge in the years before the fence went up.

Is this finally the end of the road? Well, registration makes any further application for judicial review pointless, because the fence will have to come down (see below) and judicial review only looks at the process and whether a decision was properly made. If Cotham School went down this road then, even if they were successful in court, the decision would just come back to the Committee to be taken again – but the fence would no longer be there anyway. Only a court can now amend the register entry, if it considers it to be incorrect and deems it just to rectify the register. Any such court application would be expensive, risky and hard for Cotham School to justify making, since TVG status makes no difference to its ability to continue to use the land for PE (in the same way that it has done since 2000).

The recording of Stoke Lodge as Village Green 29 in the Council’s official register is significant because it triggers the application of legal protections for the land. TVG status protects both informal community use and sports use by Cotham School and local clubs in the way that it has existed for decades. However, under the Inclosure Act 1857 it is a criminal offence to interrupt the use or enjoyment of a village green as a place for exercise and recreation, and under the Commons Act 1876 any enclosure of a village green, or any erection on it or disturbance or interference with the soil of the green which is made otherwise than with a view to the better enjoyment of such town or village green, is a public nuisance. These matters can be pursued by public or private prosecution.

This is why the fence erected by Cotham School in early 2019 (in full knowledge that TVG applications were in process) must now be removed. We were pleased that Cotham announced on 11 August that the pedestrian gates around the field will now be permanently unlocked, 24/7 – but more needs to be done. Ongoing use and enjoyment of the green is interrupted by over 450 fence panels and posts, and this is more than an academic point since the pedestrian gates have never been access-friendly for users with mobility issues, and have never been sufficient in number or placed in the right locations. And if you’re stuck in the nettles and brambles on the narrow perimeter outside the fence, your enjoyment of the rest of the green is definitely interrupted by the fence panels barring your way! Physically as well as visually, the fence is detrimental to the use and enjoyment of this historic parkland.

We are so proud of the way our community came together to protect Stoke Lodge. It took hundreds of hours of work, it took people giving their time, their skills and their money to support the effort – in fact, it took a village to gain our Village Green. We’re so grateful to everyone who supported the campaign and encouraged us to keep going even when significant obstacles were repeatedly put in our way.

We look forward to the swift removal of the fence and to replacement signs that no longer claim to prohibit access or to set additional restrictions on ‘permitted’ use, but instead welcome the school, clubs and the public to the UK’s newest Village Green!
Wonderful news!

Jun 29th, 2023

We are absolutely delighted to announce that the councillors on the Public Rights of Way and Greens Committee have voted, with cross-party support, to register Stoke Lodge as a Town or Village Green – 6 in favour, 1 against and 2 abstentions.

Here is a link to the livestream of the meeting and here is a short video we released following. the meeting:

We are of course delighted with the outcome and will provide more information when we have it.

Here’s a message from Darren Jones, our MP:

We echo that sentiment – it’s time to move forward together.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us on this journey – we know from the messages coming in following the meeting how much this means to each one of you. Stronger together? Definitely!
PROWG papers published

Jun 20th, 2023
The agenda papers for the Public Rights of Way and Greens Committee meeting on 28 June have now been published (click here). This is the meeting at which councillors will consider whether to register Stoke Lodge Playing Field as a Town or Village Green.

We’ve produced an 8 minute video to provide a quick way of understanding what the issues are, and what questions have been handed over to the Committee to consider. Please click here to watch the video.

The process has been messy and complicated, and there is a lot for councillors to read. In brief, the Inspector produced a report in March 2023 that suggested two reasons why the land should not be registered. But his report also misquoted and misrepresented some of the evidence we submitted, and it ignored some key issues altogether.

All parties were offered the opportunity to comment on his report, and because his failure to deal with our evidence was so fundamental, we handed our full submissions directly to the Committee, so they could see for themselves what was wrong with the Inspector’s report.

The Inspector reviewed those comments and wrote a Note, in which he:
- admits that he was wrong on some issues and may have misinterpreted the key case that he was relying on (Winterburn);
- says that it’s up to the Committee to weigh the facts for themselves on these two issues, and that it’s open to them to conclude that the legal test for registration is met.
Our video provides an overview of the issues, the problems with the report, and the questions that the Committee will answer. Please click here to watch it for yourself.

We’re confident that when the Committee considers the issues, on the basis of the evidence we have submitted, it will decide to register Stoke Lodge as a TVG.
Coming to PROWG for a third time…

Jun 19th, 2023
Why is the Public Rights of Way and Greens Committee about to consider whether to register Stoke Lodge as a Town or Village Green for a third time? Isn’t that unusual?

Well, yes it is unusual – but nothing about this process has ever been normal. The first TVG application involved a public inquiry; the subsequent Inspector’s report was considered at a PROWG meeting on 12 December 2016. The Inspector had recommended that the land should not be registered, on the basis that the Avon signs made use not ‘as of right’ during the first five years of the TVG1 period, up to 1996. But the Inspector’s report is only a recommendation – the decision has to be taken by the Committee itself.

At that meeting, the PROWG committee discussed the relevance of the Avon signs and the Winterburn case at length. They rejected the Inspector’s recommendation, giving as a reason: ‘Three members of the Committee considered that the facts in Winterburn v Bennett [2016] EWCA Civ 482 were not the same as the facts of this case… The small number of signs on such a large site was not sufficient to make the use of the land contentious.’

Cotham School challenged that decision by way of judicial review, and the Council defended the Committee’s decision to register the land. BCC argued that there were not enough signs, and 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.
The High Court said that it was ‘not controversial’ to say that Stoke Lodge is very different to the car park in Winterburn, but that the Committee’s decision-making process and reasons had not been adequately recorded (the minutes did not explain why, having accepted his report, the Committee had departed from the Inspector’s findings).

That meant that the PROWG Committee had to reconsider the application in June 2018. At this meeting there was very little discussion about the issue of signs and no discussion of whether ongoing use was contentious. After discussing the financial and party political implications of the process to date, a vote was taken and the Committee split 50/50 on political lines. On a casting vote, the decision was made to accept the Inspector’s recommendation and reject the application.

An email from Ben Mosley (Head of the Executive Office) to Mike Jackson on 4 July 2018 provided the following briefing:

It’s important to say that this is not, and should not be, a party political matter. Members of the Committee are being asked to consider a legal test on the basis of the evidence before them. Matters about the protection of, and public access to, green space, are important to Councillors on all sides of the Chamber and from wards right across the city. That’s why Full Council passed a Golden Motion in September 2021 to protect Bristol’s green spaces. That Golden Motion included a statement that ‘The need to conserve the existing Green Belt, as well as retaining vital green spaces, remains a major priority for most people in our city.’

Full Council resolved to ‘work with local communities across Bristol to similarly make every effort to designate much loved green space in other parts of the city and noting that such protection for green space was proposed as part of the recent Bristol Local Plan Review.’

We all want to preserve our green space and our mature trees. We don’t want to see it buried under astroturf or tarmac, or dazzled under the glare of floodlights. We know that Cotham’s ambitions to develop and commercialise Stoke Lodge lie behind its objection to TVG status (click here to read more). PE lessons at Stoke Lodge are not under threat from a TVG, but this important open space is certainly under threat of future development by Cotham School.

We hope all Councillors on the PROWG Committee will, on the basis that the legal test for registration is fully met on the evidence, support us and decide to register Stoke Lodge as a TVG on 28 June – once and for all!
The 2010 Cabinet Briefing Note – what came next? It could be you…

May 18th, 2023

So what did the Council do after receiving the 2010 Cabinet Briefing note – the one that referred to ‘as of right’ use and to Stoke Lodge? The one that told the BCC Cabinet that Stoke Lodge Playing Field ‘is currently unfenced and allows unfettered community access’?

What happened next? Well, the Council didn’t put up any signs (nor did Cotham School until July 2018). It didn’t make a Direction (which was the only legal means for it to control use).

Instead, the Council held a consultation on the development proposals for Stoke Lodge Playing Fields in summer 2010 and these were roundly rejected. On 13 September 2010, the Cabinet Member for Education, Clare Campion-Smith, formally wrote to officers in the education team stating:

‘As you know, the cabinet requested last year that officers should explore the shared use of school playing fields and avoid fencing them off to the public unless there were very strong reasons for doing so… The consultation has taken place and all who responded were in favour of shared use. The cabinet has agreed that no fencing should be erected’.

On 15 September Clare Campion-Smith attended a meeting of the local Neighbourhood Partnership (which was the local area group with delegated authority through which the consultation had taken place) and confirmed her agreement to a resolution stating that ‘the Executive Member had given an assurance that the proposal to fence Stoke Lodge had categorically been dropped and that the parkland would remain with open access for all as of right.’

See those last three words? They aren’t there by accident, and because of the earlier Cabinet briefing and specific legal advice to the Council, their significance was clear.

Bristol City Council followed up in 2011 with an assurance in its public response to ‘Bristol’s Budget Conversation’. In answer to a comment referring to the Stoke Lodge proposals and saying that ‘I feel further fencing off of school playing fields is a waste of money’, the Council said:

‘We are happy to reassure people, once again, that we will not be fencing off the Stoke Lodge playing fields and quash this rumour once and for all’.

That ‘once and for all’ lasted until 2018 and a private meeting between Jo Butler (the Headteacher of Cotham School), Sandra Fryer (the Chair of Governors) and Mike Jackson, BCC’s freshly-in-post Head of Paid Service. This is the meeting at which the school complained about the very clear statement made by BCC officers in mid-July 2018 that the playing fields are the curtilage of a listed building (Stoke Lodge house) which meant that the school could not put up a fence without proper planning permission. On behalf of Cotham School, having to make a planning application was described as ‘pivotal and devastating’ – an odd statement given that the Chair of Governors is also a trustee of the Town and Country Planning Association, whose website states: ‘Planning matters to people. The way decisions are made influences people’s trust in local democracy and whether they feel at home in their communities.’ Quite.

The net result of that special pleading was a U-turn by the Council, which told Cotham on 21 September (a week after the TVG application was made) that it no longer considered the playing fields to be the curtilage of a listed building (quite a turn-around in just 2 months). The Council then, after giving Cotham that decision, got some hasty external legal advice ‘in order to confirm that we have a robust position in the event of the inevitable legal challenge brought by local residents’ – the words of Gary Collins, BCC’s Head of Development Management, in an email to Mike Jackson, Anna Keen and Asher Craig dated 24 September 2018.

Even at this point, Gary Collins’ position was that the type and height of fencing used would have to be acceptable to the Council in order for the school to obtain landlord’s consent. It was only later that the Council was persuaded to retreat further and hide behind the idea that ‘the fence is not a structure’ (that’s right, the 1.6km long, 2m high fence that is concreted into the ground and has security cameras, retractable bollards and auto-locking gates is not a structure according to the Council). Why did officers make that move? Because the fence had to not be a structure in order for the Mayor to be able to say, as he did at Full Council in January 2019, that he had ‘no power over this‘ – as landlord and local planning authority BCC took no responsibility at all for the situation created by their U-turn on curtilage. Notice, by the way, the Mayor’s repeated statement in that last video clip that “It’s gone through the Monitoring Officer” – we’ll come back to that in a later post.

As we’ve said before, this is how it’s done. Incrementally. Behind the scenes. Despite all assurances previously given to the public.

And it could be your local green space next.
Timeline: how did we get here?

May 12th, 2023

1946/7 onwards

The Stoke Lodge estate was purchased by Bristol City Council in 1946/7. Stoke Lodge house was used from 1970 as an Adult Learning Centre. Parts of the grounds were retained as an arboretum, walled garden, car park etc. The remainder (approx 23 acres) has pitches on it and has been used for PE lessons by Fairfield School and from September 2000 by Cotham School, as well as for club sports and informal recreation.

2010

A briefing paper to BCC’s Cabinet set out a proposal to erect fencing around, and significantly develop, the playing field area. Following a public consultation, the Cabinet decided that Stoke Lodge would not be fenced off and that informal ‘as of right’ community use should continue.

2011

In March 2011 a local resident applied to have the playing fields registered as a Town or Village Green to protect informal use (this is TVG1). A couple of months later, negotiations started between BCC and Cotham School about the school’s lease of Stoke Lodge following its upcoming conversion to academy status. BCC inserted wording into the Department for Education model lease making Cotham’s rights as tenant ‘subject to all existing rights and use of the Property, including use by the community’. Linked to this, BCC agreed to indemnify the school for any costs/liability to do with trees and boundaries on the site and reduced the school’s maintenance obligation, reflecting the open amenity use of the land. Cotham became an academy on 1 September 2011.

2016

Following a public inquiry in June, the TVG1 inspector recommended that Stoke Lodge should not be registered as a TVG due to the existence on the site of mid-1980s Avon County Council signs about trespassing. In the first 5 years of the TVG1 application period, Avon owned the land so the inspector held that the signs were effective to prevent ‘as of right’ use in that period. In December, the PROWG committee disagreed with the Inspector’s recommendation, after discussion about the number and effectiveness of the signs. It decided to register the land as a TVG. The school challenged this decision by way of judicial review; BCC defended its decision to register the land in the High Court.

2018

In May, the High Court ruled that the PROWG decision was invalid, because the minutes of the December 2016 meeting did not properly explain why the committee disagreed with the Inspector’s decision.

Cotham School announced a plan to fence off the playing fields, saying that Ofsted required a fence for safeguarding reasons. In response to this, BCC officers informed Cotham that because the land was the curtilage of a listed building, a planning application would be required for its proposed fence.

Ofsted confirmed that it does not require detached playing fields to be fenced off on safeguarding grounds.

During summer 2018, Cotham School held meetings with planning officers (including Gary Collins, Head of Development Management) and subsequently with Mike Jackson, BCC’s former Chief Executive, and was allowed to ‘submit a case’ for reconsideration in relation to curtilage status. Much of the information provided by the school was subsequently shown to be incorrect, but on 21 September the school was told that officers had done a u-turn and the land was no longer considered to be the curtilage of a listed building, so no planning application was required for the fence.

However, following two mediation sessions hosted by Darren Jones MP in which school representatives had shown themselves wholly unwilling to compromise on their proposals (“It’s this fence or a bigger fence”), a second TVG application was lodged on 14 September 2018.

2019

Cotham School constructed a fence in the first quarter of 2019, under continuous observation and protest by residents. These protests ensured that the fenceline had to be altered in multiple areas and that post-holes had to be dug by hand rather than by digger, to protect the root zones of TPO trees all around the site. There was significant press coverage of these protests.

In July 2019 a further TVG application was submitted for technical reasons (‘TVG3’) – this has been joined with TVG2 and the two applications are being treated as one.

2020

In August, with the agreement of all parties, the Commons Registration Authority appointed an Inspector to consider both TVG applications.

2020 – 2023

The process has required many sets of written submissions from all parties.

More developments are expected soon.
Why should this matter to anyone else?

May 10th, 2023

Obviously, those of us who use and love Stoke Lodge Playing Fields care about this – but why should anyone else be interested?

Well, for context, shared use between schools, sports clubs and informal users existed on these playing fields for decades. When Cotham School became an academy, it got a 125-year lease to use the land for PE, and that lease was written on an ‘as is’ basis – the Council, as landowner, specifically wrote into the lease that the school’s rights were subject to ‘all existing rights and use of the Property, including use by the community’. We’ll talk more about the lease another time.

And the land also benefited from a special status, as the curtilage land of a listed building (Stoke Lodge House). That’s relevant when you’re looking at planning applications, and it means that certain permitted development rights don’t apply – like, to pick an example at random, putting up a 2m high perimeter fence. So how did the fence go up without a planning application? Cotham School persuaded the Council’s planning team to remove curtilage status from the land, and to agree that it could put up the fence without a planning application – again, we’ll cover this another time – and just like that, Cotham started saying that the community’s access was permissive (i.e. is only allowed on its terms), and that it was generously sharing use by leaving a narrow, non-maintained muddy perimeter outside the fence and unlocking the gates at times to suit the school.

And it matters because this is how it happens. This is how we lose access to green space all around Bristol. Not through fences specifically (although sometimes), but incrementally, by flawed decision-making behind the scenes combined with costs and delay that eventually force community groups to give up. Well we don’t intend to do that. We’re in this for the duration, as long as it takes. But the tactics that have been used against us are the same ones that are regularly rolled out around the UK to defeat community campaigns.

For another case study, consider Packer’s Field – Whitehall Playing Fields in Bristol, which is leased to City Academy. Local residents there made an application for village green status in 2004 (which was ultimately rejected). But the wider context is that when a planning application was made in 2008 to build an athletics facility with a running track and floodlighting on the field, the planning committee noted that it was supported by Sport England and BCC officers because it would deliver ‘sporting enhancement of the site, without compromising the local community’s existing access arrangements which are facilitated through the adopted Community Use Agreement’. Even though the agreement was said to have been adopted, a planning condition was attached stating that the facilities should not be brought into use ‘until a revised signed contract securing community use of the sports facilities has been submitted to and approved in writing by the Local Planning Authority’. And now? Recent freedom of information requests* have uncovered that BCC has ‘destroyed’ its copy of the community use agreement; and the Cabot Learning Federation which now runs City Academy says it knows nothing about it. And so one gate is open in the fence for the community to access the land, for just 2 hours in an evening, as long as there’s nothing else going on.

We won’t give up because if we do, this historic 26 acre field wrapping round a Grade II listed building which is part of Bristol’s heritage, will inevitably be developed. That doesn’t necessarily mean houses or student accommodation – it might also mean hardstanding for coaches, high internal fences around multi-use games areas, floodlighting and entry on payment only. We know that because we’ve already had a glimpse of Cotham’s future plans for Stoke Lodge. Those plans aren’t about educational benefit – there is very little educational benefit in the school wasting more than 50% of any PE lesson travelling 3 miles across north Bristol to do 45 minutes of activity, change their shoes in an expensively ‘refurbished’ pavilion and travel back again, when the school could hire facilities much closer to its main site, increase lesson times and reduce the impact on the planet. It’s about commercialisation and academy profits. And yes, schools need funding – but that’s not the deal Cotham signed up to, and it knows it. Its lease gives it the right to use the land for PE ‘subject to all existing rights and use of the Property, including use by the community’. Stoke Lodge is not the school’s exclusive private property, however often it tries to tell us that. It belongs to the citizens of Bristol and we have a right to expect that our Council will defend our access to it, as per the lease. But the Council has already shown that it won’t make Cotham stick to the terms of its lease, so here we are.

And could it be your local park next? Each new school needs sports facilities. We can’t just invent more open space for pitches, so they will have to share with other schools or with the public. But if a new school were to start off with an agreement to use pitches in, for example, Netham Park, how long would it be before the Council allowed the school to leverage that into fences, auto-locking gates and exclusive access?

The hard lesson is that warm words and assurances – even special provisions in the lease or a full-on community use agreement – won’t protect your access to open space if someone pushes the right buttons.

*To see the FOI requests, click here and here.