Impact Statements

Judith's Impact Statement

The facts of the appalling mistreatment we have suffered at the hands of Shropshire Wildlife Trust and its Trustees are all documented in our correspondence and in the emails of Ms S.


I’m a 90 year old woman who can only with great difficulty walk to my property which for 15 years I haven’t been able to use. I can’t get workmen to come over to repair the terrible deterioration that the cottage has suffered as we have no usable track, which I offered to put in.


I wonder how you can equate this behaviour with your daily lives but then it hasn’t impinged or affected you in any way so you continue with the myth that you are saving a valued piece of land from a two tyre track?


Let’s take XX (property name) as an example, their property is on the common as is mine. There the parity stops, they were allowed to put in a two tyre track.


We have tried endlessly for over 15 years for the same equality because of the track they run a profitable business, they can get workmen over and were allowed a mechanical digger over to dig out ditches outside their house which is on the common “to prevent flooding of our property”, all that we ever wanted was to put in a two tyre track.


You, and the Trustees have with your machination destroyed what should have been my happy retirement. That intelligent and professional people such as yourselves have not only condoned but perpetuate this terrible misuse of the power that you have wielded to the detriment of both my health and financial well being.


It is within your power to put this right. You cannot undo the awful stress and worry you have caused neither can you give me back all my wasted years trying to be allowed to put a track in so that I may drive over which the Prescriptive Right allows but you and the Trustees won’t allow.


Your reprehensible actions have been rewarded with charity status.


I remain yours in great sadness and depression that I will die without ever being able to use my home.


Shame on you all.


Judith W*

Meredith's Impact Statement

I graduated in late 2009, I had secured employment, my mother and I had planned to move to the property. All that changed with the deliberate obstruction to our legal right of way.


I was unable to take up my job. I have now been unemployed for over 15 years, my degree is out of date, I am too old to emigrate, I have suffered a substantial and ongoing loss of income.


My late uncle was a commoner and I wanted to start my own business, this is impossible without vehicular access. Shropshire Wildlife Trust and Natural England have substantially interfered with our business interests.


We could have sold the property many many times over, and invested elsewhere.


Our lives were hard enough, but the open hostility, vandalism and continued deterioration of the cottage has produced the most acute anguish. The incredible stress and worry have taken their toll, I constantly feel ill.


My mother has under gone two whole knee operations during the last 15 years. I have watched my poor mother’s health deteriorate month in month out, she has suffered irreparable damage to her health.

There has been no change in our circumstances, we are still trudging across the common, we have been left in limbo, we have been unable to move on with our lives, whilst OTHERS have not only benefitted greatly but have led charmed lives.


It is deeply, deeply disturbing that so many intelligent, well educated, professional people consider this an acceptable way to behave. All we have to show is 15 years of misery and wasted life, reams of paper work, subjected to endless red tape and constant moving of the goalposts.


Words cannot adequately describe what my poor mother and I have endured, our health continues to deteriorate.

Our lives would have been so very very different but for the substantial interference caused by Shropshire Wildlife Trust and Natural England.


This has cost us dearly.


Meredith W*




Pages