COMMUNITY efforts to secure village green status for land in north Cumbria have failed.

The county council’s planning panel voted to reject the proposals from Cumrew parish council at a meeting this week following advice from officers.

The area put forward for village green status includes grassland in the village, a settlement which lays 11 miles south of Brampton and 13 miles east of Carlisle.

It is the latest in a series of applications from communities for special village green status to have been considered by county councillors in recent years.

According to the report considered by councillors for Cumrew, the application was assessed by the Registration Authority and was initially thought to be “one that might be recommended”.

However, after a “more detailed review of the evidence”, officers concluded that the user evidence submitted was “wholly inadequate” to satisfy the criteria required for the land to be registered as a town or village green.

The county council suggested that “new user evidence” should be gathered and submitted in support of the application for village green status.

But according to the council report, the applicant wrote back “intimating their frustration at this request” which they believed “amounted to starting the whole process from scratch”.

It was then explained that the submission of new evidence would not be equal to a fresh application and would merely add to the existing one, but no additional information has been received.

The applicant was also given the chance to speak about the proposal but has not responded to the invitation.

The move toward village green status was supported by 34 people of Cumrew’s 42 residents, letters that were felt to satisfy claims that the land was indeed in general use by the community.

However, the report also found that many of the supporting letters were “quite brief”, did not provide detailed descriptions of sports and pastimes, and that it was “difficult to determine” how frequently the land was used.

Dog-walking could only be cited in support of the village green status if it could be shown that the land itself and not just the paths were being used for this.

The report also suggested that the land was so overgrown during the last site visit that “it would be hard to envisage activities such as bird-watching taking place on the land”.

The open space is not registered with the Land Registry.

MRH Minerals Ltd owned the freehold mines and minerals in the ground, but the company has not responded so far to the plans, councillors were told.