Common Ground: What Really Decides a Village Green Application in 2026

The town or village green is among the oldest forms of land protection in England, and among the least understood. Registration under section 15 of the Commons Act 2006 does not simply record a pleasant local custom; it fixes the land with a status that makes built development very difficult to deliver. That is why a registration application is so often the first move made by a parish council or campaign group when a housing allocation appears in a draft local plan. It is also, frequently, the move that fails — not because the grass matters less than campaigners believe, but because the statutory tests are considerably narrower than the campaign surrounding them.

The test is about use, not about affection

Section 15 asks a series of deceptively simple questions. Has a significant number of the inhabitants of a defined locality indulged in lawful sports and pastimes on the land? Have they done so as of right? Have they done so for a period of at least twenty years?

Each element carries weight. 'As of right' means use without force, without secrecy and without permission — the old formula of nec vi, nec clam, nec precario. A field that has been walked for two decades but only because the owner left a gate open and never objected may still qualify; a field used under a written licence almost certainly will not. The quality of the land, its wildlife, its drainage problems and its place in local affection are not the test. They may explain why people turned up; they do not prove that they did.

The twenty-year period is calculated backwards from the date of the application, and it must be continuous in substance. A gap of several years, or a period during which access was formally closed, can break the chain and force a campaign to start again.

Timing: trigger events and the closing window

The Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013 altered the arithmetic of these applications. Schedule 1A to the 2006 Act identifies 'trigger events', which include the publication of a draft development plan document, the making of a neighbourhood plan and the grant of planning permission for development on the land. Once a trigger event has occurred, a registration application must generally be made within a year of it.

This is where many campaigns come unstuck. A group will spend eighteen months assembling user evidence, commission a historian, print questionnaires and then file — only to be told that the window closed months earlier, because the planning committee resolved to grant permission in the meantime. The clock runs from the event, not from the moment the campaign feels ready. Parish councils that begin gathering evidence before an allocation is published are in a far stronger position than those that begin after the committee report.

Where registration meets a live permission

A registration application does not suspend the planning system. A local planning authority can still determine an application, and an inspector can still allow an appeal, while a registration application is pending. Nor does registration automatically extinguish a permission that has already been granted.

In practice, however, a registered green is a material consideration of very considerable weight, and a permission that cannot lawfully be implemented is of little value to its holder. Schemes have foundered where the green covered an access road, a drainage attenuation area or a play space, even though the housing parcels themselves were untouched. Developers should therefore treat a credible registration campaign as a delivery risk rather than a public relations nuisance, and lenders will usually take the same view.

The evidence that genuinely persuades

Registration authorities and inspectors are not indifferent to local feeling, but they decide on evidence. What tends to carry weight includes:

• Contemporaneous records. Parish magazines, school logs, fixture lists, newspaper reports and photographs that can be dated independently of the campaign.
• Specific witness statements. Detailed accounts naming dates, routes, companions, seasons and activities. A small number of credible witnesses is worth more than hundreds of identical forms.
• User questionnaires gathered early. Evidence collected after the trigger event, in a coordinated push, is scrutinised more sceptically than material that predates the dispute.
• Historic mapping. Tithe maps, enclosure awards, estate plans and aerial photography can establish the physical character of the land over time.

The 'significant number' threshold is a matter of judgment rather than arithmetic. A hamlet of sixty households and a market town of twelve thousand will be assessed on different footing, and a handful of regular users may or may not amount to a significant number of the inhabitants of the relevant locality.

The permissive access problem

Landowners defeat claims most often by showing permission, not by denying use. A grazing tenancy that implies tolerance, a licence to a local football club, a notice at the gate, a stile installed with the parish council's agreement — each can convert apparently informal recreation into use by right.

Section 15A adds a further layer. Where a landowner has deposited a statement and map with the registration authority, use of the land after the date of deposit is presumed to be by permission unless the contrary is shown. Use before the deposit still counts, so a deposit is a defence for the future rather than a cure for the past. Developers acquiring land with a long history of informal access should consider making a deposit early, and should expect the previous twenty years to be examined on their own terms.

Practical steps for developers and promoters

Before exchange, commission a desktop and walkover review that specifically addresses public use: the commons register, any section 15A deposits, parish minutes, local walking groups and the definitive map. Ask the seller directly whether access has ever been granted, and in what form. Build a registration contingency into the appraisal, particularly where a permission will itself act as a trigger event and open a twelve-month window for an application. Option and promotion agreements should allocate the cost and conduct of any registration inquiry clearly.

Practical steps for parish councils and campaigners

Begin recording now, not when the allocation lands. Keep a dated log of use, photographs and named witnesses. Take advice on the boundary of the land and on the locality to be defined, because both are frequently contested. Above all, diarise the trigger events and the resulting deadline; a well-evidenced application filed late is worth nothing at all.

Where this leaves housing land supply

Every successful registration removes land from the supply, and in areas where the five-year housing land supply is finely balanced, a handful of greens can shift the arithmetic materially. That is a legitimate consequence of the statutory scheme, not an abuse of it. But the village green is a brittle instrument as well as a powerful one: it rewards early, disciplined evidence-gathering and punishes late, emotional campaigns.