CHIDDINGFOLD campaigners have failed in their quest to create a new village green on a meadow in Woodbridge Road, informally used as a recreation area for more than 20 years.

An application for Village Green Status was submitted to Surrey County Council in 2015 by villagers Antonia Cowley and Angus de Watteville – supported by 54 witnesses who had used the field for recreation for more than 40 years.

But an objection was received from the McLaren Clark group on behalf of the owners of the land and a public inquiry to decide the issue was held in November 2017.

Following a three-day inquiry, the inspector recommended in a report published in March that the application should be rejected.

Members of Surrey’s planning and regulatory committee agreed to support that recommendation last Wednesday.

The inquiry inspector agreed from the evidence that there was a long-term history, extending through the relevant period, of permissive use of the southern strip of the field, at least as a route to pass through, for the benefit of a number of families residing on the north side of Woodside Road.

He also found there was a long history of some permissive ‘domestic gardening’ by individual neighbouring residents, within the southern strip outside the back gardens of Woodside Road properties.

But he described the evidence of any use for most of the relevant period by the inhabitants of Chiddingfold, more widely than the immediate Woodside Road neighbours with back garden gates and their occasional guests, as ‘extremely thin and unconvincing.’

The inspector’s conclusion was the applicants had failed to establish that the statutory criteria for Village Green Status had been met, even in respect of the undoubtedly more heavily used ‘southern strip’ of the field.

Supporters of the Chiddingfold Campaign for Green Space to Give Woodside Meadow Village Green Status are now concerned the area could be developed for housing to meet Waverley Borough Council’s increased targets.