A fascinating insight into landowners’ concern with the workings of the Commons Act 2006 in the pioneer areas, is revealed today in an EIR (Environmental Information Regulations 2004) disclosure.
The correspondence records the dissatisfaction of local landowners and farmers in the Penwith peninsula of Cornwall whose land is subject to applications for the registration of the land as common land under paragraph 4 of Schedule 2 to the 2006 Act. Paragraph 4 was enacted to revisit some of the more egregious mistakes of the registration process under the Commons Registration Act 1965 — most often, where applications to register common land were rejected by a Commons Commissioner on a false understanding of the law relating to waste land of a manor, which was corrected by a judgement of the House of Lords too late to influence the outcome in most cases. Only land which was the subject of a provisional application for registration under the 1965 Act can be the subject of an application today under paragraph 4.
The disclosures are quite frank, and show how local landowners’ concerns have been raised at Ministerial meetings with the Country Land and Business Association. PannageMan will not be quoting selectively from the disclosures, but a careful perusal will reveal some interesting and surprising comments about the application process, the landowners’ interest in the application land, the effect of a successful application on the management of the land and the mangement of sites of special scientific interest, and the National Trust’s position in relation to such applications affecting its land. Read on… .
