Castle Acre Green, Swansea, becomes a new village green
We are delighted that 2.9 acres of green space and woodland known as Castle Acre Green, Norton, in the village of Mumbles near Swansea, has been registered as a village green by the commons registration authority of the City of Swansea. This means that local people have established their legal right to continue to use…
Read MoreWe defeat Barmby Moor village green swap
The Planning Inspectorate has rejected an application from Barmby Moor Parish Council to swap part of the village green, near Pocklington in the East Riding of Yorkshire. The parish council wanted to allow a private vehicular-access across the green. We were the sole objector. We considered that the swap was unfair, since the proposed exchange…
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The Welsh consultation on access and recreation
We have responded to the Welsh Government’s consultation on ‘Improving opportunities to access the outdoors for responsible recreation’. We have welcomed the proposal for greater access rights but made it clear that this must not be at the expense of public paths. We have deplored the Welsh Government’s dismissal of the historic value of the…
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Refusal of access track across historic Cumbrian common
We are delighted that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has refused to allow an access track to be driven across ancient common land at Newbiggin, near Penrith in Cumbria. The common is known as Public Watering Place and has a number of springs with a series of ancient stone troughs…
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Commons registration: a half century
Fifty years ago today, 5 August 1965, the Commons Registration Act became law. The Open Spaces Society had pressed for the registration of commons for decades, and it was one of the principal recommendations of the Royal Commission on Common Land in 1958. During the passage of the Commons Registration Bill the society secured a…
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Silver jubilee of village-green revival
It is twenty-five years since the gates reopened to allow people to register land as a village green where that land had failed to be registered under the Commons Registration Act 1965. On 1 August 1990, a quarter of a century ago, the society led the way in advising people what they could do, with stories in the…
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Giving Henley a hand for Entente Florale
At the invitation of our member Henley-on-Thames Town Council our general secretary Kate Ashbrook spent part of our 150th birthday on Sunday meeting the judges of the Entente Florale European competition. The council had entered for the award, having been nominated by a Britain in Bloom judge. The ten judges came from all over Europe,…
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Counting our battle honours
150 years ago on Sunday (19 July) at a meeting in a lawyer’s chambers in London, our organisation was launched: Britain’s oldest national conservation body. Without the society countless commons, green spaces and public paths would have been lost for ever. And there would be no National Trust, since it was the society’s founders who…
Read MoreOur AGM marks ups and downs for green spaces
‘The Open Spaces Society has never been more needed in its 150-year history than today, as green spaces are increasingly threatened.’ So declared our vice-president, open spaces expert Paul Clayden, at our annual general meeting today (9 July). ‘The society played a significant role in rescuing Welsh village greens from the damaging law which has prevented their…
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Major victory for green spaces of Wales
The Welsh Government has decided not to ape England’s village-greens law. In December 2013 we learnt that the Welsh Government was proposing, in its Planning (Wales) Bill, to copy the provisions of England’s egregious Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013 for greens. In other words, it proposed that applications for greens should be outlawed when land had been identified for planning,…
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