High Court asks government to appear at South Bank village green hearing

The judge deferred the hearing until September to formally invite a government representative to participate in the proceedings and clarify how the Growth and Infrastructure Act's restrictions on village green registrations should be interpreted.

The 2013 Act amended the existing regime to provide that the right to apply to register land as a village green is excluded in circumstances where the land has been allocated for redevelopment.

The Southbank Centre, including the skateboard undercroft, is allocated for mixed-use redevelopment in Lambeth's local planning policies.

Campaign group Long Live Southbank, which had brought the challenge, said in a statement it believed that the interpretation of the Growth and Infrastructure Act's restrictions argued for by the Council "would lead to absurd and unintended results".