Laurie Kubiak, Roding Valley, Essex

Ours is an absolutely textbook village green: a triangular piece of land next to the church. Local people have used it as a village green since the 1930s, when most of Roding Valley was built by Charles French.

It was never, however, officially registered as a village green, a legal designation that offers special protection from development. When French died, ownership passed to a charitable trust, but the land continued to be used by villagers for sports, picnics, school activities and children's play, and was always maintained by the council.

When the trust sold the land to developers in 2006, it gave no advance warning of its intention, so it was a shock to wake up one morning to the sight of chainsaws cutting down trees. Two of the oldest trees were gone in a matter of hours. It was bewildering and traumatic, and initially nobody knew what to do to stop it.

People sprang into action very fast however, fuelled by genuine anger. A few locals were out the next day collecting signatures for a petition, and a meeting was called by one family who had lived in Roding Valley for five generations. We live on the same road and I ended up as chair of a new residents' committee made up of two representatives from each of the surrounding streets. We also invited representatives for the oldest and youngest community members.

We realised we'd have to get the green officially registered despite determined opposition by the developers. It took nearly three years to get to the point of a public enquiry, which began in November 2008. Sustaining the campaign for all that time is a real testament to the committee's commitment to the cause.

We had over 200 witness statements attesting to the different types of use that the local community made of the land and 30 people gave personal testimony. In July this year we got the decision, completely accepting that the land has every characteristic of a village green, and giving us the legal designation.

The land is still owned by the developers, but they'll never be able to do anything with it - other than watch Roding Valley community enjoy using it!

Reproduced with permission from the Countryfile website
Fiona Cowan
5 March 2009