Common land deregistration challenge

Richard Buxton Solicitors was instructed by the Open Spaces Society in relation to a decision by North Yorkshire County Council to deregister certain common land at Low Moor, site of the former Richmond Racecourse. The County Council initially defended the claim but after permission was granted it consented to judgment and to pay the Society’s costs.

In May 2020, an application was made to the County Council to deregister two areas of land said to be wrongly registered as common. The Open Spaces Society objected to the application on the basis that there was no justification for deregistration of the full area applied for, as it did not form “curtilage” of the derelict buildings on the site, as the applicant claimed. None of the buildings had been used for horse racing since 1891 and it was not appropriate to determine their curtilage based on the former, long-ended use. Further, there was nothing that marked the extent of the curtilage “on the ground” so the determination was arbitrary and a building need not have a curtilage, but the County Council had not considered whether no curtilage existed at all.

Permission was granted by Mrs Justice Lieven on both grounds of claim, after which the County Council consented to judgment on the basis that it “failed (a) to recognise that a building need not have a curtilage, (b) to address the fact that the claimed curtilage had no physical delineation or physical manifestation by which its boundaries were defined; and (c) to adequately consider the fact that the buildings have not been in their historic use for over 100 years and, in the case of the Grandstand and Zetland Stand, were partly demolished many years ago.”