Commons Act 2006

Dan Rogerson Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2014 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dan Rogerson)]

I am pleased to announce the next stage in the implementation of part 1 of the Commons Act 2006, under which the registers of both common land and town and village greens can be amended.

Part 1 will be fully implemented in the counties of Cumbria and North Yorkshire. These counties have been chosen because they have the highest hectarage of common land and are among the most agriculturally active counties in England, in terms of commoning.

Many properties were wrongly registered when the registers were compiled in the late 1960s under the Commons Registration Act 1965 and commons registration authorities have not had the power to amend them. The result is that those properties have been adversely affected for over 40 years. This has had a knock-on effect on the owners’ ability to sell those properties. I wish to enable this situation to be resolved so I intend to implement section 19(2)(a) and paragraphs 6 to 9 of schedule 2 to the Act throughout England.

Section 19(2)(a) allows for the correction of mistakes made by commons registration authorities when recording entries in the registers. Paragraphs 6-9 of schedule 2 allow for the deregistration of land that was wrongly registered as common land or town or village green.

The question of further implementation of part 1 in England will be considered again as soon as resources permit, which I expect to be within the life of the next Parliament at the earliest.