Earlier this month, on 10 June 2025, HHJ Paul Matthews handed down his judgment in Cotham School v Bristol City Council and Katharine Welham [2025] EWHC 1382 regarding Bristol City Council’s (“the Council”) decision to register the Stoke Lodge playing fields (“the Land”) as town green land in August 2023. The case itself is one of only three successfully reported claims under Section 14 of the 1965 Act to delete land from the village green register, but it has important implications for any school land that could be subject to a town and village green application.
The Land has been subject to a 15 year legal debate, and this judgment is in respect of the Council committee’s resolve to register the Land as a village green against inspector’s recommendation following the third application made by a member of the public. The case was highly emotive, but the Court was clear that its only function was to determine “whether the land..at the date of registration was, or was not, within the legal definition of a town and village green, and if it was not, whether it is “just” to amend the register”.
The school’s grounds of appeal
There were six grounds of appeal in total, including whether village green registration was incompabible with the use of the land for held for statutory educational purposes (Ground 1). However, this article focuses on grounds 5 (Interruption to Use) and Ground 6 (Unlawful Use).
Both these grounds turned on the use of the Land for organised sports. Cotham School argued successfully that when the playing fields were being used for organised sports, this amounted to displacement of the members of the public such that their use of the land was interrupted. The judge determined that this situation was materially different from that in Lewis – this is the village green case where a golf course was held to be a village green because there was give and take which occurred when members of the public stopped to allow golfers to play their shots.
The judge determined that a member of a public would not pause for the length of time that it would take to allow the game to finish before continuing on his or her way across the pitch. Due to the fact that the game occurred frequently, several days a week during term time, amounted to interruption such that the public could not demonstrate continuous use of Land. This is a significant judgment focusing on the importance of the length of time that the “pause” would have had to occur. Whilst this focused on organised sports, we consider that it would be equally applicable to activities such as forest schools, which if occuring, would result in members of the public being “displaced” from the use of the land.
Ground 6 flows from the above decision. If members of the public had not given way when the organised sports were taking place, then this behaviour would have been unlawful under section 50 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982 and Section 547 of the Education Act 1996. The judgment states at paragraph 316 that “I hold that no such intervention or inteference with school games can be relied on in order to establish that the statutory criteria are met”.
What steps should schools take to protect their land?
Of course, it remains the case that we strongly recommend that steps are taken to ensure that any land which could potentially be accessed and used by members of the public is protected by the deposit of a highways statement and landowner statement under Section 31 (6) Highways Act 1980 and S15A (1) Commons Act 2006. Fencing, locked gates and clear notices such as “Private Land. No unauthorised access” should also be erected at places where the public may enter onto the land.
