Our purpose
Buy the land. Keep it green. Forever.
One sentence sums up why the trust exists: land that the community owns cannot be built on against the community’s wishes.
The problem
Sawbridgeworth sits between Bishop’s Stortford and Harlow, and the fields, hedgerows and river meadows around it are much of what makes the town what it is.
Planning policy has held the town’s edges for decades. But policy is reviewed, boundaries are redrawn, and the pressure on land at the edge of a growing town does not go away. Every local plan cycle brings the same questions back around.
Campaigning against individual proposals can win time. It cannot win permanence.
Our answer
We buy land on the open market, at a fair price, like any other buyer – and then we hold and manage it for our charitable objects. Charity law makes that binding rather than a matter of goodwill.
It is an unglamorous approach. It is also the only one that still works in fifty years’ time.
What our constitution actually says
These are not a mission statement we can revise over coffee. They are the objects written into our constitution, and they are the only things the trust is allowed to spend money on:
- To advance the conservation, protection and improvement of the physical and natural environment – in particular by acquiring, holding, restoring and managing land, water and buildings as habitat for wildlife, and by conserving and enhancing biodiversity.
- To preserve and protect, for the benefit of the public, the open spaces, landscape and natural beauty of the area.
- To advance the education of the public in the conservation of the natural environment, and in the wildlife and biodiversity of the area.
“The area” is defined too: the civil parish of Sawbridgeworth in Hertfordshire, the parishes adjoining it, and any other area within five miles of that parish boundary. We cannot drift outside it, and we cannot quietly become something else.
Our principles
What we commit to
In perpetuity
Land we buy is held permanently for our charitable objects – conserving its wildlife and landscape, and keeping it safe and protected for the local community.
Community first
We exist to benefit the people of Sawbridgeworth and the surrounding parishes – not our members personally, and not any commercial interest.
Open books
We publish annual accounts, report what we have bought and what it cost, and answer members’ questions at our AGM.
Nature first
We care for what we own so that wildlife and nature can flourish. Where a site can sensibly be made available for people to enjoy, we will do that; where it is better left undisturbed, it will be.
Sharing what we learn
Educating people about the natural environment is one of our three charitable objects, not an afterthought – walks, surveys and plain accounts of what lives on the land we hold.
Fair dealing
We negotiate openly with landowners and pay market value. We are a buyer, not a campaign group aimed at any individual.
Politically independent
We work with anyone who shares the aim and take no party position. We do not comment on individual planning applications.
What protection actually means
When people hear “protected land” they often assume a legal designation somewhere in a council file. Ours is simpler and stronger:
- Title. The charity is the registered owner at the Land Registry.
- Charitable objects. Our constitution binds the land to conservation and public benefit. Selling it is not a free choice: the Charities Act requires written advice from a qualified surveyor and the best terms reasonably obtainable, the proceeds have to stay inside the charity, and a sale to a trustee or anyone connected with one needs the Charity Commission’s prior written consent.
- Members. Changing our objects takes a 75% majority of the votes cast at a general meeting – or the written agreement of every member – plus the Commission’s written consent. It is not a decision the trustees can take.
- Dissolution. If the trust were ever wound up, what remained would have to go to charitable purposes the same as or similar to our own. It could never be shared out among members or trustees.
Nothing here depends on a future council, a future government, or a future local plan.
Turn a policy into a promise
Every membership and every donation adds to the fund we draw on when land comes up for sale.