Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of registration anomalies relating to common land; and what steps they are taking to rectify them.

The Government recognises that there are registration anomalies relating to common land arising from the former Commons Registration Act 1965. These include issues such as incorrectly drawn boundaries, buildings mistakenly included within registered commons, and land recorded that did not meet the legal definition of common land. Schedule 2 of the Commons Act 2006 provides mechanisms to correct such historic registration errors.

To support this process, and as part of the partial implementation of Part 1 of the Commons Act 2006, the Government has provided grant funding to a limited number of local authorities to undertake this work. Funding was initially made available to seven “pioneer” authorities from October 2008 and later extended to two additional authorities in 2014. These authorities—Cumberland Council and North Yorkshire Council—continue to receive funding to carry out their statutory duties under the Act. To date, they have been allocated £494,858 and £326,339 respectively, with funding scheduled to run until March 2027.

There are currently no plans to roll out Part 1 of the Commons Act 2006 more widely across England, but we will keep this under consideration.