Commons rights ruling will undermine land values, solicitor says

A sole practitioner in Devon is preparing an appeal against a High Court ruling which he says could lead to subsidies being cut and land values undermined.

Eric Cowsill, principal of Eric Cowsill solicitors in Ivybridge, Devon, said Mr Justice Kitchin's judgment, handed down at the Bristol District Registry last month, meant that people would no longer be able to rely on entries in the Register of Common Land.

'The guidance has always been that entries in the rights section of the register are not split unless it says so,' Cowsill said.

'If the register is not conclusive, then anybody relying on it will have to demonstrate a history of the use of their rights. My client and his family have had cattle on this land for decades, but the judge went beyond that looked at the history of the common in the medieval period.

'The judge tried to reach a resolution which he thought acceded with the historic position.'

Cowsill said that if the grazing rights of his client, a local farmer, were not limited to the area specified on the register, but shared with other parts of the Dartmoor area, his subsidies under the Environmentally Sensitive Areas scheme would be cut.

'This decision can only lead to confusion and payments by DEFRA being delayed or reduced,' Cowsill said.

Giving judgment in Dance v Savery [2011] EWHC 16 (Ch), Kitchin J said the defendants argued that Dance's right to graze 56 bullocks or ponies and 224 sheep on part of Brent Moor common was split over two other parcels of land.

'In my judgment the best evidence of the true position is that Mr Dance clearly understood that his right to graze the defined livestock was split over all three register units and so made his application for registration of his rights of common in the way that he did,' Kitchin J said.

He said Dance's right was 'not a stand alone right' and was split over part of Dean Moor and the forest of Dartmoor.

He concluded: 'Entry 108 means that Mr Dance has a right to graze the defined livestock over part A of CL 161 of Brent Moor, in so far as he is not already grazing the same livestock over neighbouring register units CL 162 of Dean Moor or CL 164 of the forest.'

Cowsill said the case raised much wider issues than the rights in question and he was preparing, with counsel, to launch an appeal.

He said the application for leave to appeal would be heard at a further hearing later this month.