EFRA committe and common land

James Cross, Chief Executive, and Guy Thompson, Executive Director for Local Delivery, Natural England gave evidence to the EFRA commitee on Wednesday 4 March 2015.

The Foundation for Common Land have been lobbying for a dispute resolution mechanism and it looks like we might be getting one step nearer to this.

On page 11 of the transcript, the Chair, Anne McIntosh asks:

"You will be aware of the situation that has arisen under existing agri-environmental schemes in the common land, where there is often a difficult situation between the landowner and the graziers. Are you confident that these tensions and problems will not exist under the new schemes?

James Cross: The issues you have described are incredibly complex and complicated. Natural England is changing its approach, so that, uniformly across England, we engage and talk to the wider user community and do not make decisions on an isolated basis. Going back to that very first point I made, early engagement, showing the workings out, sharing the rationale and having an early dialogue will give us the best chance of solving these very important and very complex issues. The way to guarantee failure on that front is to make a decision in isolation and make a decision quickly. We are interested more generally, in terms of how Natural England works, in a much more collaborative and partnership approach to some of these decisions that have a landscape-scale impact, often, rather than a farm-by-farm or  site-by-site impact.

Chair: One of the recommendations of the Committee was that there should be a dispute resolution mechanism. Is that something that you could support?

James Cross: Yes, it is.

Guy Thompson: Yes. There is no panacea for commons. Clearly, these are, by definition, large complex situations, with a number of actors and a number of interested parties. James has rightly pointed to how we can help. We see an important role for our advisers in working on the ground with commoners and interested parties to identify the long-term outcomes all parties want to see from those sites. Inevitably, disputes will crop up. It is inevitable in the commons context, and I think a dispute resolution mechanism could only be helpful in that context."