More than 100 hectares of moorland in West Cornwall have been registered as common land.

Lizard Downs is 116 hectares of open moorland that failed to be finally registered as common during the three-year period allowed by the Commons Registration Act 1965.

However, it has now been added to the common-land register.

This is because Part 1 of the Commons Act 2006 re-opened the door for the registration of the land provided it remains today ‘open, uncultivated and unoccupied’. 

The Open Spaces Society, Britain’s oldest national conservation body, says that it is important for land to be recorded as common, where there is the evidence, because it is then protected and the public has a right to walk there.

Under the 1965 Act, Lizard Downs was provisionally registered as common land but the registration was cancelled owing to objections.

However, in the late nineteenth century and under the Inclosure and Regulation (Lizard Common) Provisional Orders Confirmation Act 1880, Lizard Downs was recognised as common land.

The proposed inclosure authorised by the Act did not take place owing to the expense of implementation. 

The recognition of the land as common land under the nineteenth-century legislation, ie qualifying for inclosure (but never inclosed), meant that it could be considered for registration under the Commons Act 2006.

In 2020, the Open Spaces Society applied to Cornwall Council to register the land, and it provided evidence of the 1880 Act and plans.

The council agreed with the society that the land met the criteria for registration and has now added it to the common-land register.

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Frances Kerner, the society’s commons re-registration officer who carried out the research, said: "I am delighted that the recognition of the land as common land well over 100 years ago has now been acknowledged. 

"While the land is managed by Natural England and is part of the Lizard National Nature Reserve, its registration as common land confers additional protection, and a right for the public to walk there, for all time."