The last round of a long-running legal dispute over grazing rights on common land at Bodmin, Cornwall, will be decided by five law lords in London on Thursday.
The Law Lords are to rule on a challenge by Wilfred and Heather Penter over earlier court decisions that Stephen and Caroline Bettison, who farm elsewhere, are nevertheless the owners of “rights of common” to graze 10 cattle and 30 sheep over land at Tawna Down, Bodmin.
The Penters claim that the grazing rights over Tawna Down are annexed to and can only run with their land at Sina Farm. However, in 1998 a county court judge at Bodmin ruled that the Bettisons held the grazing rights and that decision was upheld by the Court of Appeal.
Now, in a last-ditch challenge, the Penters have taken the case to the House of Lords, claiming that, as a matter of law, grazing rights historically linked to an area of land belonging to a farmer exercising those rights cannot be separated from the land so as to be enjoyed by a farmer rearing cattle elsewhere.
PLS News 16/5/01
