Commons Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 91A:"Page 29, line 13, at end insert—" ““(   )   In the case of any land which was common land at any time in the previous 150 years, the landowner with title absolute may register the land as common land with the commons registration authority.”” The noble Lord said: The effect of Amendment No. 91A would be to allow the owner of a piece of land which used to be common to reregister it as such. He may be registering it anew if it was common land before 1965 or it may be a matter of reregistering it. The period of 150 years in the amendment is purely arbitrary. It is merely an attempt to refer to land which ceased to be common fairly recently in terms of the history of commons and not to make the provision apply to land which may have been common land about 1,000 years ago. Previously we discussed the fact that the Bill as it stands allows owners of land to declare land as common under an express grant with the appropriate legal documents, such as deeds. That would make it a simple process of allowing the owner of land which was common fairly recently to return it to being common land. That is the purpose of the amendment. I am putting this forward having had some examples brought to my attention by the Friends of the Lake District, who believe that there are instances where this would be helpful and valuable, certainly in that part of the country. They quote the example of former commons around the Thirlmere reservoir. The Corporation of Manchester took over the land, converted it from commons to their ownership and planted conifer forests on it. Given the way people consider managing such land nowadays, as opposed to when the reservoir was built, a public body like that might well decide that it is no longer necessary to have conifer forests there and that it would be sensible to return it to its original state as common land. It has been suggested to me that the mere ability of such an organisation to register land would be the sensible way forward. The second example is of a common where it is fairly clear from the layout of the walls, the land and the arrangement of the common that it used to be larger, and part of it—for whatever reason, perhaps by agreement with local people—was not registered as common land under the 1965 Act, while the rest of it was. So perhaps the common has a wall around it, while part of it was fenced off and not registered as common land, although the history of it suggests that it should have been. I do not want to reopen the question of errors in the 1965 Act’s registrations, but I suggest that if the commoners of the existing common were to purchase the piece of land they believe should be part of the common, they would then be the landowners. A simple process of registering the rest of that former common as part of the common that now exists ought to be possible. That is a straightforward situation and a straightforward process, and that is the purpose of this amendment. I beg to move.