Open Space - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition open-space

Definition :

Open space, means it is only with reference to the country that the word 'open' carries the meaning 'free from wood building etc.' Accepting the several meanings of the word 'open' the existence of 7 or 8 scattered trees within the space sixty feet wide all round would not render the entire space any less an open space within the meaning of that expression in the proviso to rule 18(a) of the Madras Places of Public Resort Act II of 1888. It is equally clear that the existence of say one free at one corner of the space would not prevent the space being an open space, Nachimuthu v. Ramaswami Chettiar, 69 MLW 887: (1956) 2 MLJ 556 (DB).

By the (English) Metropolitan Open Spaces Acts of 1877 and 1881, the (English) Metropolitan Board of Works (succeeded by the London County Council, under s. 40, sub-s. 8, of the (English) Local Government Act, 1888) had power to acquire and to hold of the use of the public any open spaces within the metropolis. These Acts were extended, with amendments, to urban sanitary districts, and, with the consent of the Local Government Board, to rural sanitary districts, by the (English) Open Spaces Act of 1887; and the (English) Open Spaces Act, 1890, empowered the trustees of land held upon trust for the purposes of public recreation to transfer it to the local authorities of their districts for those purposes. The (English) Open Spaces Act, 1906, consolidates these four Acts (see Chitty's Statutes, tit. 'Public Improvements'), and by s. 20 enacts that:-

In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires,--

The expression 'open space' means any land, whether inclosed or not, on which there are no buildings or of which not more than one-twentieth part is covered with buildings, and the whole or the remainder of which is laid out as a garden or is used for purposes of recreation, or lies waste and unoccupied.

The above definition much enlarges that of 1881 as amended by the Act of 1887, and see Bermondsey Borough Council v. Mortimer, 1926, P. 87, as to the requirements for a faculty from the Consistory Court under this Act to convert a closed church-yard into an open space.

Square gardens in cities and boroughs are still protected by the Town Gardens Protection Act, 1863, within which statute it was held in 1868 that Leicester Squarein London did not come, Tulk v. Metropolitan Board of Works, (1868) LR 3 QB 682. See also London Squares Preservation Act, 1931 (c. xciii.), and for powers of the Minister of Health, other departments and local authorities, the Housing Acts, the (English) Town and Country Planning Acts, and the Ribbon Development Act, 1935, and Public Works Facilities Act, 1930, s. 2; (English) also Local Government Act, 1933, s. 174, providing that a compulsory order for the acquisition of an open space is provisional only and must be confirmed by Parliament; and as to open spaces held in undivided shares (transitional), see Law of Property Act, 1925, s. 39, and 1st Sched., Part V. (5); and Re Bradford City, 1928 Ch 138, and Re Townshend, (1930) 2 Ch 328.