SWANSEA councillors have turned down an application to designate land in Pennard, Gower, as a village green.
Three residents submitted the application in September last year and it was assessed by a barrister inspector, who also considered five objections.
The land in question is an area of common land east of Pennard Road, opposite Pennard Golf Club, and is owned by the golf club’s owners, Pennard Burrows Ltd.
The inspector recommended that Swansea Council’s planning committee dismiss the application. The matter was due to be determined in July but it was deferred following representations by one of the applicants, Andy Rees.
Dr Rees urged the committee to designate the land as a village green at a meeting on September 2, arguing that it had been used as of right by people continuously for 20 years up to the application last year. He claimed it had been used as of right for around 60 years.
Citing some of the recreational activities he said have taken place there, he concluded: “So we contend it would only be fair to the local community to give this area of land, as hatched in black on the map, the village green status it rightly deserves.”
Village green status protects land from development and preserves it for use by local people. The landowner may be disadvantaged.
The committee heard the inspector had further considered Dr Rees’s representations from the July meeting but did not change her original recommendation that the application should fail.
Her report said while there was a dispute of fact as to what, if any, use had been made of the application land for sports and pastimes, this wasn’t a matter capable of being resolved on the papers alone.
The report said: “Resolving factual disputes as to the nature of the use would require testing at a public inquiry.”
It said even assuming the applicants’ case was proved that there had been use of the land for sports and pastimes throughout the relevant 20-year period by a significant number of residents, the question arose whether the applicants could ever establish “as of right” use given the public had a right to use the footpath there and also a right to access and use the entire land for open air recreation under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act.
Her report said if “as of right” could not be established no purpose would be served in testing the evidence at an inquiry. The inspector also said she had ignored all points regarding a car parking dispute.
The committee unanimously approved the recommendation to dismiss the application.
