Evans v Wimbledon And Putney Commons Conservators
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
- LORD JUSTICE RIMER
- LORD JUSTICE KITCHIN
Areas of Law
- Administrative Law
- Property and Real Estate Law
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
The claimant challenged the Wimbledon and Putney Commons Conservators' decision to grant easements facilitating a development project. The primary issue was whether the Conservators had the authority under the Wimbledon and Putney Commons Act 1871 to grant these easements. The court held that the Conservators did have this authority and that the proposed development did not breach their obligations under the Act. The decision to dismiss the claim was upheld on appeal.
Judgment
Lord Justice Patten :
The claimant is the co-founder of the Friends of Putney Common which he describes in his witness statement as a group of local residents whose aim is to protect such part of the site of the former Putney Hospital (“the Site”) as is now in the ownership of London Borough of Wandsworth (“the Council”) from inappropriate development. The hospital was erected in 1911 on the site of two large semi-detached dwellinghouses and a row of cottages. The Site is landlocked and depends for access to the public highway on access roads across a small part of Putney Lower Common (“the Common”) which were created in 1911 with the consent of the Wimbledon and Putney Commons Conservators (“the Conservators”) to replace the road layout originally serving the dwellinghouses and the cottages.
The former hospital building is now derelict. There were plans to redevelop the Site so as to provide a primary care centre and a block of 24 flats. But the Site has now been sold by the Wandsworth Primary Care Trust (“the PCT”) to the Council who propose to develop the Site as a new primary school and housing for which planning permission was granted on 13 December 2013. The contract for the sale of the Site was conditional upon the Council entering into a deed of easement with the Conservators following the grant of planning permission for the development. Once executed, the deed of easement will provide for the grant to the Council as owner of the Site of rights of way by vehicle and on foot over a defined accessway and footpaths linking the Site and the development on it to the Lower Richmond Road together with a footpath access from the north-eastern end of the Site to a residential road called Commondale which runs along the side of the Common parallel to the eastern boundary of the Site. The deed also grants rights of access to the Council to enable it to construct the necessary accessway and footpaths and afterwards to maintain them. As part of the consideration for the grant of these new rights of way, the Council has agreed (as part of the Agreed Works as defined in the Schedule to the deed) to remove areas of hardstanding around the perimeter of the Site so as to create new grassed areas in keeping with the Common and to transfer to the Conservators such of these areas as remain in its ownership. As I shall explain in a little more detail later in this judgment, some of the areas of hardstanding lay within the land owned by the PCT and were tran