Why green must not mean go

The picturesque seaside town of Whitby is not, of course, in the Yorkshire Dales, but there is at present a tendentious legal action under way in that fellow North Yorkshire community which could be of immense significance here.

It involves a small piece of open land which local folk have used for many years for recreational purposes – ball games for the kids, dog walking or simply being out and about for the adults – which is now threatened with being built on because, in the past, no-one ever bothered to register it as a village green.

There are dozens of places like this here in the Dales, bits of land where the youngsters have kicked a football about or set up the stumps for an impromptu game of cricket, land played on by today’s village elders when they themselves were children. As such, they have been more or less taken for granted.

And there’s the rub. Because they have never been designated as officially recognised open spaces new government planning regulations make them a plum target for new housing with the “presumption” that planning permission will be granted – even if the local authority is opposed.

This is the legal confrontation which is under way of some four acres of land known as Helredale playing fields in Whitby, a centre of a local controversy which has led all the way up to the Supreme Court, backed by England’s oldest conservation body, the Open Spaces Society.

The society was formed after the enclosure of the fields in the 18th and 19th centuries which threw thousands of peasant farmers – or serfs, to give them a more appropriate name – off their lands so that wealthy landowners could convert their holdings to less labour-intensive – and therefore more profitable – agriculture.

Whitby residents had formed the Helredale Neighbourhood Council in an attempt to have the land officially designated as a village green, but that application was turned down by North Yorkshire County Council because, many years ago, it had been placed on a list as suitable for housing under a law passed by Parliament in 1936.

Says Viv Wright, secretary of the neighbourhood council: “The outcome of this case is vital not only for our much-loved green space, but also because it raises an important area of law. The result is likely to have a significant impact on future village green applications.”

Nicola Hodgson, case officer for the Open Spaces Society, added: “It is becoming increasingly difficult to register land as a green, since the government changed the law preventing applications on land earmarked for development. So it is important to establish exactly what are the criteria which enable land to be registered.

‘Helredale is one in a succession of cases through the courts which will clarify the law on greens.

“It will determine whether open spaces which are held by local authorities under the Housing Acts can be registered as greens. We fervently hope that Helredale succeeds in the Supreme Court and makes further registrations possible.”

The case went before the Supreme Court at the beginning of this month and judgement was reserved.

As Kate Ashbrook of the Open Spaces Society told me: “We have no idea how long we will have to wait for the judgement to be made public. These things take time.”

Whatever the judgement – and the government has made no secret of its plans to enforce a huge house building programme on the nation, much of it likely to be on green belt land – this case should act as a warning to many locals here in the Dales who treasure their own open spaces.

Here, there are dozens of villages – many of them along the A65 corridor – whose residents are already up in arms over new housing projects. And, unfortunately, in the Craven area outside the national park, there is little protection from the district council. Councillors have not yet drawn up an approved development plan ... and without it, refusing planning permission in the face of government policy would be virtually impossible.