Ashton Vale Town Green

Yesterday I had the dubious pleasure of sitting on the Public Rights of Way and Greens Committee that determined the Ashton Vale town green application. I was one of two councillors (along with Alex Woodman) to vote against the agreed proposal to register the bottom 'half' of the site and not the top 'half' (I know they're not equal sizes).

I was somewhat caught on-the-hop by the swiftness with which the Chair moved to a vote - there is usually a period after questions to officers where councillors make statements about their views which can be batted back and forth before the vote is taken. This didn't happen yesterday (it's common practice, but not procedure), so I lost my chance to explain my thinking.

The first thing to make clear is that Town Green decisions are based on a pretty fixed set of legal criteria that have nothing to do with future uses, how much the land is valued by local people or the strength of feeling on either side. The key criteria in layperson's terms in this case is whether the applicants (i.e. the people who wanted the Town Green) could prove on balance of probability that the site had been used significantly for recreation throughout the 20 years prior to the application - i.e. from late 1989 onwards.

The recommendation made by officers was that new evidence had been submitted which showed that the top half couldn't have been significantly used for recreation until mid/late 1990 as it was still being converted from a landfill site to a grass field. We were asked to agree with this recommendation on the basis of the officers' judgement and the committee was provided with a short precis of the new evidence.

I went and spent two hours yesterday pouring over the full versions of the new evidence and the Inspector report. My view was that it was important and certainly undermined, to a degree, the applicants' case for 20 years of significant use. However, I did not consider that it was an irrefutable 'killer blow' and I was mindful of the applicants' contention that it was not substantively different from what was provided to the Inspector.

As a quick detour, let me explain my attitude to independent inspectors: they are not infallible. I see lots of inspector's reports on town green applications and planning applications and so on. I have seen plenty that I believe make the wrong call on the basis of the evidence and, more tellingly, I have seen a good handful of important factual and interpretive errors. Remember too, it was an independent inspector that wanted to force Bristol to take a deeply-damaging tropical biofuel plant - we fought that one all the way!

As a result, I will never be persuaded by an argument that says "you must approve X because the Inspector says so". Interestingly, I also sat on the Committee for the unsuccessful application for Castle Park to be designated as a town green. At that meeting, the applicants shouted that the inspector's report (which recommended rejection) must be ignored because it was flawed and biased and that councillors should show some spine and think for themselves. Maybe there were even some people at both meetings!

I do try to think for myself and I am not convinced that the applicants did demonstrate significant use across all 20 years, on the balance of probabilities, for the top half of the site. 18 years or so is beyond doubt as you can clearly see footpaths that have emerged by the early 1990s in the contemporary photographs. But the evidence for significant use in 1989 and 1990 is flimsy. That's my call at the moment and I know that the applicants won't like it! However, I do believe that it would have been proper to have referred this back to the Inspector for them to comment on the new evidence. I wouldn't have necessarily taken their amended view as sacrosanct, but I think it was proper to draw on their expertise again.

My preferred option, yesterday, would therefore have been to register the bottom half of the site as a town green and to refer the top half back.

I anticipate that this posting is going to attract comments and possibly some heated ones. Please remember the house rules: I won't allow anything to remain published here which may constitute libel or, frankly, which is pointlessly unpleasant. I maintain an open commenting blog, so please respect it and don't force me to start moderating.

Making green connections

I'm currently sat on a bus crossing the slightly rainy Basque region and wending my way towards the regional capital of Vitoria-Gasteiz. I'm taking a couple of hours out of my holiday to meet politicians and environmental experts in the city, which has recently been awarded the status of European Green Capital for 2013.

The Green Capital is a bit like the European City of Culture award, whereby one city each year is held up as an example for others. It helps to draw attention to the good work already being done, as well as acting as a focus for future developments. Bristol is still the only UK city to be a finalist so far, though we sadly didn't win. From memory, it's Malmo this year and Nantes next.

I'm going to be finding out about some of the detailed work that Vitoria-Gasteiz is doing, especially on energy production and localised supply. Aside from learning from leading lights, it is very helpful to make a personal contact with another top city who are possible partners in future EU funding bids... in fact, we're already working something up on electric vehicles and IT systems. To get EU money, you usually have to work with at least two other countries, so international friends are very useful as well as welcome!