Council pursues legal protection for green spaces

Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council is looking to enter into bespoke and legally-binding agreements with the Fields in Trust charity to ensure that popular council-owned land – including parks, open spaces, playgrounds, sports fields and cemeteries – remain publicly accessible for recreational activities, and nature appreciation, in the future.

It has drawn up a list of 88 sites – including Bathpool Park, Brampton Park, the newly created Lyme Forest at Keele; Sandy Lane in Newcastle and Wolstanton Marsh –  which are now being assessed against strict criteria for lodging Deeds of Dedication applications, where a landowner can permanently designate land for a specific public use without transferring ownership. The full list is available here.

Securing this special status would provide an additional layer of protection for much-loved spaces in the borough, over and above local policies such as current council strategies and the emerging Local Plan – due to be considered at a public examination in the summer – which classifies specific areas as green and open space, rather than for development.

Council Leader Simon Tagg said:

Newcastle-under-Lyme is home to many wonderful natural environments from amenity green spaces and award-winning parks to green corridors and nature reserves. These areas are hugely valuable community assets; they boost residents’ health and well-being, provide habitats for a diverse range of wildlife and capture and store vast amounts of harmful carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

 

The council is committed to enhancing and preserving these sites; for example, over the past four years, it has facilitated the planting of almost 35,000 trees at 37 locations as part of its work to create a more sustainable borough. They are already protected from development locally but there is a risk that this could potentially change at some point in the future. Fields in Trust status would give the venues permanent protection forever, meaning that they would be retained as public parks, playing fields and recreation grounds for generations to come.”

There are modest Land Registry costs associated with organising Deeds of Dedication in addition to officer time.

In November 2021, the council was the first in Staffordshire to adopt a Nature Recovery motion at Full Council, in recognition that nature is in long-term decline and urgent action is needed to halt and reverse this.