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"There is no principle of law which requires that there be conflict between the interest of users and those of a proprietor" Lord Jauncey of Tullichettle[1] .
Introduction
The regulation of town and village greens (TVGs) in England and Wales has resulted in a collision between the private property rights of landowners and the public law and policy justifications for TVGs (para. 27-040) ([8] Harpum et al. , 2008). In particular, landowners have become subjected to a range of public law requirements, including environmental constraints, which a diverse group of stakeholders seek to exert. It is this increasing incursion of environmental issues into TVG disputes which can be singled out and which brings into sharp focus the tension that exists when the state, through the public law, restricts private property rights. This issue has been highlighted throughout the consultation process which has culminated in the Growth and Infrastructure Bill 2012[2] .
Registration of land as a TVG demonstrates conclusively that the land has satisfied the statutory criteria which create a right for defined inhabitants to indulge in customary rights of recreation on the land[3] . However, in recent years, applications for TVG registrations have, increasingly become a mechanism through which the public try to stifle commercial development by landowners for, prima facie , environmental reasons. This can be seen through attempts to register land as a TVG where the land does not exhibit the traditional characteristics of a TVG. Indeed, the recent volume of litigation suggests that the view of peaceful co-existence between private proprietor and public user, as espoused by Lord Jauncey, is optimistic and has largely succumbed to a culture of rights based litigation in which the competing interests of private landowners and the wider public are resolved through the public law. This has led to the welter of litigation which has appropriately been described as an "industry" ([10] Meager, 2010) and recent case law illustrates that what is at stake is no longer merely a right to play cricket on a village green in a sleepy English village (para. 18) ([12] Royal Commission on Common Land, 1958). On the contrary, many recently registered TVGs are far removed from the traditional notion of a TVG and this article argues that the physical...