TWO MONTHS ago, I wrote of a legal battle in North Yorkshire which could have serious consequences for many villages in the Dales which have small open spaces which for years have been used by children playing games or by their parents walking their dogs.

Residents of Whitby had tried to have a piece of open land used for leisure purposes for at least 70 years designated as an official village green under a sort of “squatters’ rights” situation which, they thought, could be established after a mere 20 years.

The issue was taken all the way to the Supreme Court, backed by Britain’s oldest conservation charity, the Open Spaces Society, which was founded in 1865 to preserve commons and village greens after the notorious Enclosures of the Fields acts which had forced thousands of peasant farmers off the land.

The case was hugely complicated and much of it boiled down to dates. In 1951, the then Whitby Urban District Council had designated the land as suitable for building even though it had already been used for leisure purposes for many years.

An early hearing decided that the locals had the right to use the land as a village green “as of right” but the Supreme Court has now issued a ruling rejecting this under a much later Housing Act passed in 1985.

Says Nicola Hodgson, case officer for the Open Spaces Society who helped the Helredale Neighbourhood Council with its case: “This is a blow for village greens. The government has already outlawed registration of land which is threatened with development.

“Now the courts are severely narrowing the opportunities for registration. All this is happening at a time when our green spaces have never been more important for public enjoyment, and never more threatened.’

It is now likely that the land will be used for housing and the ruling will make it virtually impossible for similar plots of land in many Yorkshire Dales villages to be protected against future development, even if the local authority denies planning permission.