The idea of cattle, sheep or ponies wandering about on common land evokes happiness or unhappiness! The likes of Exmoor, New Forest and Epping Forest are examples of open country which seem ideal for commoners' rights of animal grazing or foraging - they are largely unfenced.
Normally farmers and others owning "normal" land fence their animals in: by long tradition owners of "abnormal" common land require the adjoining owners of gardens, etc to fence out the commoners' grazing animals. In other words common land is traditionally not fenced.
Unfenced common land was, I guess, intended by our ancestors to be for the animals' benefit. But nowadays car and lorry drivers dislike unfenced-in animals who tend to ignore the "look left, look right etc" routine of pedestrians wanting to cross a busy highway.
This often leads to hulabaloos by stakeholders when somebody or some body wants to (or does) reintroduce grazing animals to a piece of common land. Stakeholder drivers do not want the common to be unfenced. Stakeholder residents are afraid of being (or are) chased by animals so they want fencing. Walkers and dog walkers tend not to want fencing because it is against tradition of unrestricted access. (Note: this quasi-tradition is within living memory of the CROW Act 2000 which granted public access.)
Also, proposals for fencing must be considered by an inspector on behalf of the Secretary of State. It is surprising how frequently it is alleged that the parish council or some other legal person has not followed this seemingly important requirement to get apiece of fencing with gates installed on their local patch of common land. As the first fence post is pounded in without due process the miscreant stakeholder cannot be right!
No comments:
Post a Comment