Commons registration — Village green — Customary rights for sports and pastimes — Defendant placing caravans and mobile homes on land — Whether injunction could require land to be cleared — Deliberate action by defendant — Injunction granted
Adjoining the sea in the village of Beesands, Devon, is a green of some seven acres. After the war it was developed as a caravan site. The green was the subject of customary rights by which the public were entitled to use the land for lawful sports and pastimes; these rights were registered under the Commons Registration Act 1965.
By 1967 there were some 160 mobile homes on the land during summer months. In 1975 the defendant company, who held a lease of the green, purchased the freehold and spent some £100,000 on site works, including parking and sanitation facilities. In 1987 the plaintiffs (in a representative capacity) obtained an interlocutory injunction requiring the defendant to remove caravans and other obstructions from two of the seven acres; in the present proceedings they sought an injunction requiring the balance of the land to be cleared. The defendant contended that the area of the green was larger than was necessary to satisfy the customary rights and the area already cleared was sufficient.
Held The injunction was granted.
The area of the green was not larger than necessary or unreasonably large; customary rights extended over the whole seven acres. The plaintiff had shown that to have a football pitch on the land, part of the area where caravans were presently stationed would be needed.
Wyld v Silver
[1963] Ch 243 and
New Windsor Corporation v Mellor
[1975] Ch 380 considered.
Sheila Cameron QC and Frank Hinks (instructed by Ingledew Brown Bennison & Garrett, for Foot & Bowden, of Plymouth) appeared for the plaintiffs; and Bruce Spalding (instructed by Wickham & Lloyd Edwards, of Weymouth) appeared for the defendant.
