playing fields are declared a Town Green

decades, with the small signs not visible to most people.

Emma Burgess, from the campaign, told the meeting: “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."

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.

“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.” 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. these signs, warning against trespass, showed use of the playing fields was contentious.

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.

Supporters of the school also argued that locals knew use of the land was contentious because of the previous green application and public inquiry in 2016. But locals dispute this and say the playing fields have been used for

Jo Butler, headteacher of Cotham School, 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 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

“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.”

Meeting report by Alex Seabrook, Local Democracy Reporting Service