Extra protection given to common land

Heritage Green site, at the junction of Caldershaw Road and Cut Lane in Norden

The Open Spaces Society, Britain’s oldest national conservation body, has welcomed the Government's decision to apply environmental impact assessment (EIA) to common land. The society led the campaign to change the regulations so as to protect common land.

New regulations were laid before parliament on 25 April and take effect on 16 May.

In future, works on common land—typically to erect fencing—will have to be assessed against the requirements of EIA. If applicants want to carry out works beyond a threshold, set out in regulations, they will have to seek an EIA screening opinion from the government’s adviser Natural England, to decide whether a full EIA is needed. The screening opinion, and an EIA, are in addition to the requirement for consent to works on common land under section 38 of the Commons Act 2006.

Commenting on the Government's decision, Hugh Craddock, a case officer for the society, said: “We are delighted that the Government has seen sense and applied the requirements of environmental impact assessment to commons. There has never been any lawful excuse for exempting commons from EIA, and England has been in breach of the EIA directives for decades.

“Now, proposals for extensive fencing on commons will be subject to the same holistic assessment process as on any other land—that is wholly right, but long overdue.

“We had already contested the Secretary of State for Environment's determination of applications for new fences on common land without consideration of the requirements of EIA, and said that Defra was heading for infraction if it did not change its approach.

"We responded to Defra’s consultation on amendments to domestic implementation of EIA in agriculture to call for these changes to be made. We are very pleased that the new regulations do exactly that, but we are sorry to see that Defra has not yet explained how the requirement for EIA will fit in with the assessment of applications for works on common land. We say that applicants should have to clear the screening process before applying for section 38 consent. It would be outrageous if applicants, objectors and the Secretary of State had to waste time on a section 38 application, only to find that the entire project had been called in for a full EIA assessment.”