Date on the decision letter     21 December 2012 (agreed effective date)

Date of this review request     18 January 2013

Name (including name of organisation representing where applicable)

Chas Jones

Your contact address inc. postcode

Preferred telephone number

Alternative telephone number

E-mail address

chasjones1066@gmail.com

Site name

                     Battle of Fulford

Site address or location

 FORMTEXT                 Site runs along Germany Beck  (http://fulfordbattle.com/map_york.htm

http://fulfordbattle.com/map_local.htm)

English Heritage reference number                        469813

This appeal is made because:

·         Irrelevant considerations have been taken into account

·         The report and its annex make factual statements that are wrong

·         Many relevant considerations have been ignored and evidence omitted

·         Poor analysis as well as gross omissions of the available data represent a lack of balance which allows the report’s author to introduce ambiguity that does not exist in credible data

·         Failure to adhere to the published designation process, which along with other observations represent a breach of what is recognised as due process.

These grounds for appeal frequently overlap in the commentaries, annexes and appendices that follow.

A. Significant irrelevant considerations in this case

1. The Advice Report is heavily influenced by out-of-date planning documentation and the planning process up to 2007.

• The Advice Report refers to the ‘Historic Landscape Assessment’, a thoroughly discredited document submitted on behalf of the developers in 2005 to support a planning application.
• These partisan documents were compiled to gain planning permission and are not objective sources of information. It is inappropriate for EH to place reliance on these sources, or derivative documents which rely on them, unless consideration is also given to objector’s representations made to the planning inquiry (for example the evidence of the Battlefields Trust and my own evidence –appendix 1&2 to annex A).
• These documents contain major errors of fact and misrepresentations that have been uncritically accepted in the designation report. I will give examples of how the erroneous nature of these sources permeate the whole report in annex A.

2. The fact that a planning permission was granted in 2007 has been given undue consideration in the decision. (See also Full grounds, annex C, 1c)

• The first paragraph of the designation report draws attention to ‘an extant outline planning consent for housing’ but nowhere in the report does it state that the consent has now time-expired and is subject to an application to extend the time-limit for its implementation to which the COYC has itself raised issues and objections.
• The second paragraph quotes from the Inspector’s Report (IR 24.147). The insertion of this contentious and subjective quotation from a report of 2007 is not relevant to EH’s decision which must be based on credible and up-to-date evidence. The inclusion of any quote should have addressed the extensive criticism of this report.
• It should not be influenced by a planning application for the site.

B. Significant considerations were omitted

• A body of evidence has been ignored in the designation report which is therefore so this is, in the terms of the designation report, new information.
• Information was included that can be demonstrated to be incorrect and/or misinformed. Some of this is found in the critique of the Advice Report, annex A. The balance of the omitted or misrepresented evidence can be found as annex B.

Although all of this information has been made available, it is relevant here and must be seen as new information since the Advice Report demonstrates that they are not aware that there is so much decisive data available. I hope that within the review, the opinions expressed by the report’s author will now be checked against the published data.

C. Procedural errors

• Failure to follow the process set out in the Designation Selection Guide for battlefields.
• The decision takes into account significant irrelevant new considerations without any further consultation and lacks transparency with regard to representations made by all parties.
• Fulford Parish Council owns significant portions of the land proposed for registration. They were not invited to respond to the consultation process and EH did not inform them about the designation process. The selection of the parties who were consulted appears to have been confined to those with vested interest and who were likely to be opponents of the system.
• I object in the strongest possible terms to the lack of a proper appeal process and that an ad-hoc review procedure has been adopted that allows the erroneous decision to stand.
• The references to changes and alterations to the landscape could and should have been addressed with a site visit. A modest attempt to redress this procedural failure is addressed with a set of annotated panoramas, photographs and a schematic in annex A appendix 2.
• To emphasise the previous point, a designation of a landscape feature cannot sensibly be done without all of those who will be engaged visiting the site. Many of the errors within the designation decision could have been avoided if the writers had walked over the site.

Annex A. An analysis of the Advice Report noting wrong facts, missing information, misinformed information, failures of designation process and breached of legal due process.

1. Appendix covering the evidence about the Germany Beck landscape
2. Appendix images refuting the assertion that much has changed since 1066

Annex B. The evidence that was not reported or was misrepresented.

1.    RoyalArmouries AAA_06_Jones is added to show the military nature of the ferrous finds.

Annex C. Failures of due process

These are already extensively noted in the designation decision. But they fail to note that the decision is time-expired and currently being reviewed.

The file RoyalArmouries AAA_06_Jones is not my copyright and should not be put on any public retrieval system.