A controversial fence around school playing fields could soon be taken down after a decades-long row over public access. Councillors decided that two small signs put up in the 1980s were not sufficient to mean an inner city high school could fence off the popular fields.
Students at Cotham High School have used the 23-acre Stoke Lodge playing fields since 2011 and a large fence was put up in 2019. But locals living nearby applied in 2018 to protect the fields as a “town green”, legally keeping it open to the public.
Five years later, councillors at Bristol City Council has finally decided to accept that application and register the fields as a town green. The high school warned that the decision would have major consequences for their ability to safely use the playing fields for sports.
Read more: Decision day for fence around school playing fields at centre of decade-long row
Two signs put up on either 1985 or 1986 by Avon County Council formed a major part of debate by the public rights of way and greens committee. Barristers advising the council said these signs, warning against trespass, showed use of the playing fields was contentious.
Supporters of the school also argued that locals knew use of the land was contentious because of a previous green application and public inquiry in 2016. But locals dispute this and say the playing fields have been used for decades, with the small signs not visible to most people.
We Love Stoke Lodge is a campaign group fighting to keep public access to the playing fields. It says some other schools in Bristol use playing fields open to the public, and claim that both the Department for Education and Ofsted don’t believe a fence is needed there.
Emma Burgess, from the campaign, said: “Thousands of kids across the UK use open public land for PE, and Ofsted and the Department for Education have repeatedly confirmed they don’t require playing fields to be fenced. Sadly Cotham School doesn’t want to listen to our ideas for sharing Stoke Lodge. The school told us if we didn’t shut down our Facebook group, they would build a bigger fence and lock us out for good.”
Cotham School and Bristol City Council objected to the application. The school said the fence was needed to keep pupils safe, both from leaving school during the day and from any dog waste left on the field.
Headteacher Jo Butler said: “The landowner has made it consistently clear through signs that they object to the unfettered use of the land for the public. The school is under a statutory duty to provide sufficient outdoor space for its students. It has no other land available for this purpose.
“The school is also under very strict safeguarding duties which makes it impossible to allow the general public to use the land while its students are present. Granting this application would have very serious consequences for the operation of our school.
“It’s essential for our students, the majority of whom live in very deprived areas of Bristol in overcrowded housing with no access to green space at all. In fact the only space they have access to is the pavement outside of their homes or parks in a great state of disrepair.”
The committee was advised by a barrister that they should not base their decision on “whether public access to the land was a good thing or a bad thing”, nor the “strength of local feeling”, but instead on arcane and complex law.
The main legal question was whether locals were using the land “as of right”, meaning they did not need permission and the use of the land was not contentious. This could have been scuppered by the signs in the 1980s, but councillors decided these were too small to matter.
Liberal Democrat Councillor Andrew Varney said: “The key issue is whether the signs were sufficient to render the use of the land contentious. My conclusion is that they were not.
“Many people have used the land for decades without being aware of the signs. Stoke Lodge has numerous entrances, well worn footpaths, provision of infrastructure such as bins — and two signs erected by an extinct authority were not sufficient to render the use of the land contentious.”
