Playing field – background to licence summer 2025
For over 60 years the public have enjoyed access to the playing field on Headland Road. However, a formal agreement governing the terms of access never materialised beyond a 6-month Heads of Licence adopted by the Parish Council (PC) in the autumn of 1962. Since then there has been a historic understanding of use, but in recent times the parish’s understanding and the school’s understanding has diverged.
A new agreement
Without a formal agreement in place, and both the PC and the school in agreement that this was not a situation that could continue, Warwickshire County Council (WCC) in the summer of 2022 suggested that public access be ‘regularised’. At that time, a formal sharing arrangement was being considered, but in time that idea came to mean that public access to the playing field would be governed by licence.
However attempts to agree a licence failed. Three times. The conditions of each successive licence failed to meet residents’ needs. And residents were shocked by the conditions placed upon the village. Consequently, the PC felt that a different approach to the problem was needed. In the summer of 2024, they made informal contact with the owner of the field next to the school. This was to explore whether a land transaction could break the deadlock.
A land transaction
The initial contact with the field owner coalesced into an idea: They suggested that they offer an area of their field to WCC for use by the school. In exchange, the PC would become the owner of the area of the playing field around its play equipment. The two parcels of land to be of equal size. This proposal was put to school leadership and to WCC and was greeted with a positive response, in principle.
This land transaction deal is still at an early stage. However, the Parish Council has an early draft of what it could look like and is described in the plan linked below. It is not set in stone, but it is available for public scrutiny. There are a number of moving parts to coordinate and this does take time. In the meantime, the arrangement that allowed access between November 2024 and May 2025 expired.
A licence for May 2025
An interim solution was needed. And this would have to be a licence. Agreeing a licence was a sticking point in the past. The PC felt it was likely to be a sticking point again, so produced a proposal early on to form the basis of discussion for a new licence to begin in May. Unfortunately, this proposal was not accepted. By way of response, the PC received a draft licence based on the failed licence for the previous summer. Negotiation on this licence has yielded some limited changes. Weekend access was conceded for the summer term only. Open times are to be from 09:00 until sunset. However, other important concessions were not achieved. After school access was ruled out. Access is limited to those under the age of 12.
Despite these drawbacks, the PC accepted the licence at their meeting of 20 May 2025. Reasoning that limited access was better than no access, and that a protracted negotiation would impact the delivery of the long-term solution (the land transaction), the PC felt that this represented the best outcome they were likely to achieve.