Dartmoor National Park includes privately owned areas of moorland on which locals have grazing rights for their livestock.
In Darwall and another v Dartmoor National Park Authority [2025] UKSC 20, the court considered whether s 10(1) of the Act conferred wild camping rights on the public. Section 10(1) provides ‘a right of access to the commons on foot and on horseback for the purpose of open-air recreation…’ subject to all relevant rules, regulation and byelaws.
A group of farmers, landowners and commoners from Blachford Manor, who owned Stall Moor on the Commons had raised concerns about mess, litter and damage caused by visitors camping on the Moor. They sought a declaration that the Dartmoor Commons Act 1985 does not give the public the right to camp.
However, Dartmoor National Park Authority (DNPA) argued the words ‘on foot and on horseback’ relate to the method by which the public access the park and do not qualify the forms of recreation enjoyed once they are there.
Dismissing the appeal, Lord Reed, president of the Supreme Court, and four Justices held s 10(1) clearly confers wild camping rights.
Richard Broadbent, environmental lawyer at Freeths, said: ‘It is fantastic that finally after two and a half years of campaigning and mounting legal fees, the Supreme Court has dismissed the appeal in the Dartmoor camping case and confirmed the long-held understanding that the public has a right to enjoy the natural beauty of Dartmoor through responsible wild camping.
‘This case is a reminder of the ongoing need for greater access to the countryside, not just across Dartmoor, but across the whole country. Even now, 93 years after the Kinder Scout mass trespass which openly challenged the restrictions placed on public access to the countryside, there is a right to roam over only 8% of England.
‘Dartmoor is so special in the national imagination precisely because people do have greater access right on it. We need to expand public access to our landscapes so that more people can experience the physical and mental well-being benefits of spending time in nature.’
Giving the main judgment, Lord Sales and Lord Stephens said: ‘In our view, as a matter of ordinary language, camping is a form of “open-air recreation”.’
They said they did not accept the submission for the appellants ‘that the open-air recreation in question can only be in forms which are pursued by proceeding on foot or on horseback so that, for example, one would have no right to stop to have a picnic.
‘Having a picnic is an obvious form of open-air recreation, as are birdwatching, sketching the landscape, flying a kite, walking a dog, having a family game of kick-the-can… it would be absurd to construe section 10(1) as not including a right to carry on such an activity. We agree with Underhill LJ at para [65] that Parliament cannot have intended this. The same reasoning applies in relation to the open-air recreational activity of camping’.
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