Hands Off Hartlebury Common

#620: -

Elusive claim to title

Once again, Worcestershire County Council failed to provide conclusive proper title, if there is such a thing for Hartlebury Common.

You know, that thing you keep in a safe, or in a box under the stairs, the deeds to your house. Everybody knows where theirs is if you have a purchased property. Not WCC

The judge, if you can call him that, chose to ignore this small ommission from process, which he felt was acceptable.

In a higher court, this would not be the same case.

We would have "Lost" if WCC could have shown good title and therfore the costs and fees might have been relevant. As it is we have already told the judge and the council, we do not have the slightest intention of paying these.

Do you really think that subsequent to such incompatence, we would regard ourselves as losers and the council winners?

We have only just begun and for us, yesterday was a victory.

On the 22nd of June we went to county hall and asked fiona morgan, legal representative, if we could see the title deeds. No she said, you are not entitled to see them. Wrong.
We told her this and then she said they were not at county hall. Wrong.
She then tried to claim that they were kept at the land registry. Wrong.
Three times she claimed she new exactly where they where. At the land registry. Wrong, if they had them, they would be at county hall.

In court, after all this time, they could still not produce the elusive paperwork, even though Fiona Morgan new exactly where they were.

The paperwork shown to the judge did not show title but when presented to him by WCC, he simply acceded that title had been shown when in fact it had not. The same paperwork, was in our possession, prior to us seeing Ms Morgan. We had discounted it and it was NOT regarded as good title, which is why we were making our visit to county hall. So, what paperwork was she referring to?

He acceded to WCC because they told him that they were legal documents and in his words "I am not qualified to make these decisions" on these matters.

I still get crank messages but, I say again that this is simply not reflected by the feedback of people helping us who live locally and all the people we talk to.

We knew that the court appearence would be unusual and to think that we would have resolution this early on might have been welcome but unlikeley.

We knew before hand what the outcome would be.

Our campaign goes on, not because we lost, or won. It is because we are right and when you see something in life which is wrong it is easy to walk on, not put yourself at risk, to be the subject of ridicule. It is not the brash, or loud, or voiciferous that drive us but the quietley spoken words of ordainary people who feel bullied and threatened by the people who are supposed to represent them.

We have notified the police that we intend to continue to take the illegal enclosure down. This will commence shortly.

Steve McCarron