What are the Crichel Down Rules and what do they mean for SWAP?
The Crichel Down affair was a political scandal in the 1950’s. Winston Churchill had promised in Parliament that land at Crichel Down in Dorset, compulsorily purchased during WWII, would be returned to its owners after the War, but the promise was reneged on (see Wikipedia). This led to a public enquiry, the resignation of the responsible minister and the land eventually being sold back to the original owners.
The Crichel Down Rules are non-statutory (they are Common Law) and require surplus government land, acquired by compulsory purchase, to be offered back to former owners or their successors (subject, as always to certain pre-conditions!). A successor is the person who would have clearly inherited the property had it not been acquired.
In 1942, local farmland was acquired by Compulsory Purchase to build Wethersfield Airbase. The base was last fully operational in the early 1970s and the United States Airforce returned the base and airfield to us in 1990. Since 1992, the Ministry of Defence Police has remained the Primary Occupier.
In 2016, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) was tasked with getting rid of ten of its sites to reduce the size of the defence estate, and Wethersfield Airbase is one of those ten.
The pre-conditions for Crichel Down to apply include that the character of the land has not materially changed since acquisition (e.g. if houses or offices have been built on it), however the part which has not been built upon still has to be offered back. There are a few other conditions but the other main one in respect of Wethersfield Airbase is where it is decided on ministerial authority that the land is needed by another department.
In 2017, the MoD did advertise in the London Gazette for former owners (or their successors) to come forward - a few did, but the MoD told them that exemptions applied (perhaps because the intention was to circumvent the rules by keeping the land under MoD ownership).
A non-departmental public body, Homes England and its consultants, had been working with the MoD and Braintree District Council for some time in a pre-planning exercise, which eventually led to an announcement in February 2019 that Homes England wanted to build 4,850 homes on the site.
It so happened, prior to that, in February of 2016, The Ministry of Justice had sent out a letter to various councils in the country asking if they had suitable sites for a prison. The Leader of Braintree District Council had the planning department write back suggesting Wethersfield Airbase might be suitable. He commented in the local newspaper saying “I had a letter from the Ministry of Justice about two months ago, asking council leaders for sites suitable for prisons. I wrote back and said the MOD had empty land that could well be suitable. This was just my idea, it has not been put to the council. It’s a fairly isolated site, there is no significant housing there and it is close to Stansted Airport. It’s not a greenfield site, it’s a brownfield site because it has a ruddy great runway on it. RAF Wethersfield is an eyesore, and something needs to be done.”
Three weeks after the Homes England announcement the MoD withdrew the Airfield from disposal. The Leader of the Council is reported to have said “We have made it clear that we as a planning authority recognise there may be uses for Wethersfield, but we would need a lot of convincing that just plonking 5,000 homes there would be sustainable development.
Why I said a prison is that it would bring jobs, it’s a brownfield site and there are some houses there. It might be suitable for some housing but not necessarily all housing and if the MoJ were interested about a possible prison it would bring between 200 and 250 jobs to the district. We’d certainly be interested in discussing that.”
Well, Braintree Council has been discussing that. The current status is the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is proposing to build two ‘Mega Prisons’, with 3,430 prisoner spaces, the largest complex in Europe, on the Airfield. This means the land has not yet been considered surplus to government requirements, so the Crichel Down Rules will not apply, at least to the land intended for use by the prisons. The Rules will also probably not apply to the land which is currently occupied by some MoD houses as well as the “Technical Area” which has barracks and various other buildings on it.
If the MoJ decides not to apply for planning permission and the prisons proposal is stopped, and the land is not deemed suitable for use by any other government department, then we have been told that Crichel Down Rules will apply (though to what extent exemptions will still be claimed by the MoD we do not now).
Nonetheless, former owners, or their successors, will be given the opportunity to repurchase their land. Not all the former owners or their successors are likely to be interested in buying back their land, which means a large proportion of the 800 acres will be open to public disposal when the Mega Prisons proposal is stopped.
Whether or not they want to buy their land back, we are very interested in hearing from any former owners (or their successors) of land at Wethersfield Airfield acquired by Compulsory Purchase. Please contact us through SwapMembership@outlook.com
Once the Stop Wethersfield Airfield Prisons campaign is successful, The Fields Association will begin a new campaign to influence the repurposing of the site in such a way that will benefit us all. Ideas include a Heritage Centre and a Country Park with rewilding areas. The SWAP campaign welcomes ideas from local residents.
For more information on Crichel Down Rules, see this link: