September 14th was a sad and depressing day for the village, for The Ramblers Association and for anyone who holds out hope for a Right to Roam in England. K. Taylor of the Planning Inspectorate published his report on the inquiry into the path/driveway (the Order route) forming part of Barton Court, the estate owned by Pippa Middleton and her husband James Matthews (the Matthews), reported on here previously and extensively in the national press.
It’s a long document consisting of 79 numbered single-spaced paragraphs and more. I have read through it several times. I had been naïve enough to hope for a victory, thinking that in an impartial inquiry equal weight would be given to testimony on both sides and I couldn’t see how the Matthews would be able to continue to justify the closure of the path to the public – evidence on their side was flimsy at best, whilst there was a slew of testimony from villagers who had used the path not just for the requisite twenty years but in some cases for decades before that. West Berkshire Council had previously joined with The West Berkshire Ramblers in support of the application to assign footpath status. Sadly, I was very wrong.
It was made clear at the outset that arguments about the family’s privacy and security were irrelevant (in any case the designated footpath which joins the track runs much closer to the house). All that mattered was whether or not it had been in use by the public for the requisite length of time. But the peasantry of the village were soon to be put back firmly in their place.
There’s a history of the ownership of the estate and of the erection of electric gates blocking the Order route in 2022.
There is a good deal about signage but all of it is quite rightly dismissed as irrelevant since none of it actually applied to the Order route (so that was a terrible waste of everyone’s time).
Hoi polloi
Paragraphs 29 to 43 describe testimony, “Evidence of Use by the Public”. 35 forms were submitted as well as five witness statements submitted without a form. A certain amount of that came from various members of a single household and even though some of them described very regular use of the Order route it is dismissed as only “fairly significant” and undermined by the fact that it came from a single household. Others also attested at the enquiry to varying degrees of relatively irregular use (I submitted a form to that effect myself).
Further user evidence came from 27 people, some stating high usage (e.g. 40 to 50 times a year) over the relevant period. This was given less weight since not tested at the enquiry. One statement came from a 91-year-old man who said that the route had “always” been used as a right of way but he didn’t submit a map so it was arbitrarily decided that he could have been referring to some other path. Reports from people seeing others using the route were also given little weight since they could not be sure that those they had seen were not residents or employees etc.
The Grandees and their employees
Paragraphs 44 to 60. There was no suggestion from either side that users had been other than very occasionally challenged, but somehow this is read as confirming that there was little use. Members of the Conran family, the former owners of the estate, stated that they had not seen much use of the route, but they were not full-time residents and, crucially, the route simply cannot be seen from the house. So they could not possibly know. There is no assertion that this evidence is therefore given little weight. A gardener at Barton Court would perhaps have been more likely to observe use of the route, but the estate manager could not see the route from his office either and he was in any case “only present … for a small period of each working week”. The co-founder with Sir Terence Conran of Benchmark drove to work along the route, on the estate, regularly, but the route is not visible from the Benchmark buildings either.
A former Parish Councillor who has been involved with local annual orienteering competitions has intermittently worked on the estate but the inquiry suggests that his attention would have been elsewhere than on the route. He said that the route had never been part of the competitions indicating therefore that “it was not widely recognised as a public footpath.” I cannot see that that has any relevance or makes any sense whatsoever.
Another employee gave untested evidence, but she could not see all of the route from her office. There is a glaring common thread here.
Paragraph 56 summarising these statements is a truly astonishing non sequitur:
“The period of time that they lived or worked on the estate, or the intermittent nature of their occupation, the location of their dwelling or regular place of work on the estate is such that all the witnesses who have lived and/or worked there were not in a position to regularly observe the Order route. However, when taken as a whole the evidence from these witnesses is significant. It indicates that use of the Order route by members of the public was not widespread but rather very limited. It also indicates that challenges to public use did take place, but only rarely.”
So evidence from people mostly not in a position to see the path is significant, evidence from the public who actually used it is not.
Two more witnesses were called, both stating that as far as they were concerned the route had not been a public footpath (which was not being suggested, the inquiry was set up to decide whether it should become one). For some extraordinary reason their positions as representatives in the parish and district councils (“where rights of way matters are often raised” – but not this one) are taken to suggest that “their views do indicate that public use of the Order route was likely limited.” As per the orienteering competition, what does that have to do with anything? Surely the inspector is not suggesting that their elevated status in the village alone should give more weight to their evidence than anyone else’s.
The issue seems to have divided the village with some reporting being ostracised because of their support for a footpath. The inspector has chosen pretty much to ignore testimony from the public but to take great account of that from the objectors to the footpath order, most of whom could not even see the route in question from where they lived or worked.
What hope can there be for local communities to win battles like these?
UPDATE. This has now been reported in the local paper. Lib Dem councillor for Hungerford and Kintbury Tony Vickers echoes my surprise and disappointment. “After attending almost all the inquiry, I could not see any relevant argument put forward by Mr Mathews’ supporters. Although evidence of use was not overwhelming, some I have spoken to feel that what could have tipped the balance, albeit unsaid in the Decision notice, was the status of the series of owners of Barton Court.”
Leave a Reply