Common Land - Ownership and Powers of Ownership

Just recently it was reported that a common in Bures (Essex/Suffolk border) has been purchased by a chartiable trust with money raised from the local residents and others further away.

Many believe that the ownership of common lands in England and Wales is in the hands of "public" or the local council. Yes, some common land is owned by local authorities; but it is not unusual for your local common to be held by a private individual, a private trust, a statutory trust, eg the National Trust, or one of our many government departments, eg the Ministry of Defence.

Powers of an owner of common land are not unlike the ownership of other land but the law affecting common land ownership has been shaped by several features, namely:

• the ancient rights of commoners;




• long-held customary and statute law since the Norman Conquest;




• more recent law on enclosures over the last 600 years or so;




• legislative provisions affecting particular common lands from the 19th and 20th Centuries, eg Acts regulating the National Trust's commons;




• statutes and regulations on a host of general matters, eg planning, compulsory purchase and development; and,




• finally, specific Acts and regulations of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries which relate directly to common land and rights over such land, eg the Commons Act 2006.