Champion of common land

THE general secretary of Britain’s oldest national conservation organisation has celebrated her 40th year in post.

Kate Ashbrook, who took on the role at the Open Spaces Society in 1984, is now the longest-serving chief executive among bodies dedicated to the amenities and freedom of the countryside.

Working from her office in Bell Street, Henley, she campaigns for the safeguarding of commons, greens and public paths, which has been the aim of the society since it was founded in 1865.

Ms Ashbrook, 69, who lives in Turville with her partner, Chris Hall, said: “40 years is really hard to believe because it makes me feel rather ancient and I will not accept that because I still feel young.”

To celebrate, her colleagues joined her for a walk and glass of champagne at the top of Cobstone Hill, overlooking Turville.

Ms Ashbrook joined the society at the age of 29 after studying biology at the University of Exeter. She was inspired by outspoken conservationist Sylvia Sayer after first meeting her at the age of 16 during a public meeting called to protest at the construction of an eighth reservoir in Dartmoor National Park.

Since then, she has played a pivotal role in the introduction of legislation to protect and defend public spaces. This has included lobbying for the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000.

However, her first day at the society wasn’t smooth sailing.

Ms Ashbrook recalled: “I got here for 9am and there was no one else here so I was stuck in the passage until somebody arrived to let me in. That was a bit irritating because I was ready to go.”

She described her role in those early days as “very busy”. Projects included becoming the secretariat of the Common Land Forum, which had been set up in 1983 to explore whether the main national bodies with an interest in common land could agree proposals for legislation.

Ms Ashbrook said: “Common land is land that is owned by somebody because all land in England and Wales is owned by somebody but it’s land where other people have rights and it’s very ancient.

“Around here, we’ve got Peppard Common, Nettlebed Common, Russell’s Water Common and lots of lovely commons on the top of the Chilterns.

“As a society which focuses on commons — and no other organisation gives it the focus that we do — we were leading on trying to get the Government to do something.

“At that time, we had no right to walk on commons and there was no kind of arrangements for management of commons, except in certain circumstances.

“We had been asked by the then Countryside Commission, the predecessor of Natural England, to be the secretariat.

“I was appointed the society’s representative on the Common Land Forum and we met a great many times from 1984 until, more than two years later, we produced an agreed report, which recommended that there should be a right for the public to walk on all commons and that there should be management arrangements for commons.”

The right to walk didn’t actually come in until the 2000 Act but in the meantime Ms Ashbrook became involved in pushing other bills through Parliament.

She was involved in the public inquiry into the closure of paths across the Lark Hill artillery ranges in Wiltshire and the debate over the construction of the Okehampton bypass in
Dartmoor.

Ms Ashbrook said: “I seemed to have endless energy, which was fortunate because there were endless things to do.

“I was also trying to get publicity for the society by putting out press releases, which we hadn’t really done before.

“My predecessors were wonderful people: There was Paul Claydon, who’s well known to Henley because he lived here for many years and was very much involved in the community. He was responsible for moving the office to Henley in 1978.

“Before him was Ian Campbell. They were both lawyers, so they were absolutely brilliant at dealing with the technical and legal aspects of our work and helping people with their problems, but they weren’t so good on the publicity side.

“I put out a press release at every opportunity but it was not like today. You had to type it, photocopy it, staple it, put it in envelopes, address the envelopes, stick on the stamps and get it in the letterbox.”

It is not just the press releases that have changed in 40 years.

Ms Ashbrook said: “I think there’s much greater public understanding of the importance of open spaces and greens and commons for our health and wellbeing, particularly spaces close to people’s homes so they don’t have to get in the car.

“The public know more what they want and need, although there’s still a huge imbalance. There’s an awful lot of people, particularly from poorer communities and ethnic cultures, who don’t really know what they can do, where they can go and don’t feel welcome. That’s just as bad, I think.

“And you’ve got this growing public awareness but it’s not reflected in government policies. The Government will talk about it but won’t actually do anything.

“We’ve got this pledge from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs a year ago that there should be green space within 15 minutes’ walk of everybody’s homes — and by that we mean safe access where you don’t have to cross a busy road and can get to it easily.

“We haven’t yet seen any action on that and they’ve got to do it within five years. I’ve got no real comfort that it will happen.

“Of course, we’ll have a change of government and whether that [pledge] will survive, I don’t know. One of the things we’ve developed over the 40 years is the ability to register land as new village greens.”

A local cause she championed was the establishment of Gillotts Corner Field as a village green in 2010.

Ms Ashbrook said: “The law says that a town or village green is land on which the public has enjoyed informal recreation for at least 20 years without being stopped and without asking
permission.

“All land, commons and greens had to be registered under the Commons Registration Act 1965. They only allowed three years for doing that and at the end of three years, anything that wasn’t registered was deemed not to be a common green.

“People didn’t really know they had to register. Our society then did a huge amount trying to get people to know about it but a lot of land wasn’t registered.

“The closing date was August 1, 1970 but because the law says that it’s 20 years’ use without permission without being challenged, on August 1, 1990 — 20 years later — anything which had deemed not to be a green but still had been used, you could register.

“On that date, we had a big splash and started telling people: ‘Register the land that you’ve been using because once it’s registered as a green, it’s protected from development and local people have rights of recreation there, so it’s safe’. People were doing this and then when their loved bit of land was threatened, they would come to us and we’d say: ‘Could you register it as a green because that will protect it?’”

An obstacle came when the Government claimed in 2013 that people were registering land without evidence of use in order to stop development.

“That was not true,” said Ms Ashbrook. “People didn’t think about trying to protect land until it was threatened.

“The Government then introduced the Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013, which says that if there’s a kind of whiff of threat to land, or it has been put in the local plan as land for development, it is then too late to register it.

“It’s kind of retrospective. It’s saying: ‘Stop now. Your land’s under threat but it’s too late to do anything’ and that was a real blow. So we say to communities: ‘Do try and register land before it’s threatened’.”

She also protested at the installation of hospitality tents on the Fawley side of the River Thames during the 1990 Henley Royal Regatta.

Ms Ashbrook recalled: “I went down there in my shorts and rucksack with a photographer, walking through the guests who were all drinking their champagne and it was all very elegant.

“They said: ‘Get out of our tent, we’ll throw you in the river’. I said, ‘I’m on the public footpath’ but I also said to the photographer ‘Quick, we’ll get them for assault’ because I didn’t mind being thrown in the river. It was just a really good argument.”

During her tenure, Ms Ashbrook has seen many wins for the protection of open spaces as well as threats to public access, mainly from a lack of funding.

She said: “That’s explaining the closures on the Thames Path because, yes, you do need big sums of money whenever a footbridge over the river is crumbling and obviously there are health and safety concerns.

“I do think that government and local authorities do need to invest in paths and open spaces because they’re so beneficial, it is a good investment. It’s helping people to stay well and fit, particularly mentally.

“Development is a big problem and development needs to go in the right place.”

So what about successes?

“I think some of the legal action we’ve taken has been really successful,” said Ms Ashbrook. “We’ve been involved in cases which have established important law for commons.

“One of them is the definition of curtilage, where there was a proposal to deregister just about the whole of Yateley Common on the grounds that it was the curtilage of the Blackbushe Aerodrome terminal building, which was ridiculous.

“We didn’t lead on that but we supported Hampshire County Council to the Court of Appeal and won.

“We managed to get the closure of the definitive map deferred for five years, which is a partial success, and we still want to get it completely revoked.

“In 2000, when they brought in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act with the freedom to roam on mapped access land, the kind of quid pro quo to landowners was that they would stop the definitive map so that on January 1, 2026, you could no longer claim routes based on historic evidence. At the moment you can just claim paths whenever.

“We’ve managed to get that deferred five years, which is good because it gives us the opportunity to hopefully get the whole thing revoked. People should be able to go on claiming historic routes.”

She believes that landowners should support public access to open spaces.

Ms Ashbrook said: “It’s perfectly legal to put up a fence around a wood and if there’s no access there, it’s legal to put in a sign saying so but it’s not very friendly.

“I think landowners should recognise that the public’s ability to enjoy areas like woodlands is good because they’ll learn about nature and it’s a public benefit.

“What we’re wanting to see, and we were having some success, is getting the agricultural funding scheme to give payments to farmers and land managers for public access.

“We’re talking to officials about how it will work. That will help local authorities because it’s an incentive to landowners to keep their paths open and in good order because some paths are in a bad state.

“Last year I had a success at Tetsworth, where I served a notice on Oxfordshire County Council because of blocked paths, and they’ve been reopened.

“If they hadn’t been reopened, the council would have found itself in the magistrates’ court because that’s where I would have gone with an order to get the paths reopened.

“What we say to our members is: ‘If you’re not getting anywhere with getting paths opened, use the law.’ We spell it out on our website, the various sections that you can use.

“One of our big successes last year was to appoint a case officer to do enforcement work.

“We hand her cases as and when she can help people to get cases into court and if they’re members of the society, we can support them.

“I’m really lucky. I’ve got brilliant case officers who give lovely professional advice on rights of way, commons, open spaces and village greens.”

She works with a “lovely” team who are “committed to the cause”. “There’s only nine of us and everybody’s part time except for two of us,” said Ms Ashbrook.

“The joy of this job is that you never quite know what you’re going to be doing. I work quite a lot in the office, or I might go out on a site visit.

“A lot of it is coming into the office and seeing what has turned up and getting a call from the press to do an interview or organising someone with a problem who needs a quick response.

“It’s thinking about the messages we’re putting out to the public, how we can encourage people to know about us because we’re the oldest national conservation body but many people haven’t heard of us.

“When they discover what we do, they do get interested. The great thing about this organisation is being able to react very fast because we’re small and don’t have lots of bureaucracy.

“I don’t have a communications team to approve a Tweet before we put it out. We just do it.”

Ms Ashbrook is also vice-
president of the Ramblers, a patron of the Walkers are Welcome Towns Network, and vice-
chairwoman of the Campaign for National Parks.

In the future, she wants to inspire more young people to join the society and campaign for access to open spaces.

Ms Ashbrook said: “I am the age that Sylvia Sayer was when I met her.

“I think I have a role now to inspire younger people and my main way of doing that is through the Campaign for National Parks because they’ve got a wonderful project for young people.

“I would love to have young people to help and to work with. That would be my mission for the next few years because I’ve got to leave a legacy.”