ALAN Matthews wanted to collect firewood from a Common – for this he faces heat from the highest courts in the land.

Alan says that in gathering firewood he is exercising a traditional right.

Herefordshire Council  says that the right Alan wants to exercise on overgrown land at Bringsty Common, which the council owns and where Alan lives as a commoner, has been extended enough.

This week, Alan is waiting for the High Court to decide whether or not he can get a judicial review of ombudsman’s decision to support the manner in which a judge ruled against him at a previous high court hearing.

A ruling that left Alan feeling accused of planning his own clearance of the overgrown site he wanted to gather fire wood from rather than a claimant seeking clarification.

The application for a review is being opposed by no less than the office of the Secretary of State for Justice, defending the way judges get to decide what case evidence, information and facts can be  taken into consideration.

The original case had Alan asking Birmingham High Court  to review the way Herefordshire Council made management decisions as the owner of Bringsty Common where he lives and wanted to gather firewood from – in the belief he was exercising a traditional right as a commoner.

In making his case, Alan says he’s  holding the council to a scheme for the management of Bringsty Common drawn up in 1951.

 A scheme he says remains in force today.

Officially, Herefordshire Council is making “no comment” on the increasingly labyrinthine affair.

Alan first started asking questions about the way the Common - specifically several hectares of overgrown woodland near his home - was being managed as far back as 1995.

The council was drawn into the issue when it came to own the Common in 1998.

At its simplest, Alan wants to uphold that 1951 scheme of management he believes is being breached by a council hoping tree and scrub overgrowth close to his home will eventually produce a timber crop.

 It nearly two years for Alan to secure a copy of the Scheme from the council through disclosure.

Though the council is making no comment, case papers outline its denial of mismanagement saying the Common – as a whole – is being suitably managed and that, while the trees near Alan have “grown considerably” since the 1980s, when he bought his home, over the years they will be “thinned and felled” for the “whole cycle to begin again.”

As such, the council says, they will be “managed as a crop.”

When Alan tried to exercise his right as a commoner to gather firewood from the site, the council refused him saying, in Alan’s words, that the number of properties already exercising that right was enough – with any more risking a complete change to the nature of the Common.

And so the process through the courts began.

So far, Alan feels he’s being “punished” by process for raising the issue in the first place and wonders how it has all been allowed to go so far.

But he takes heart from having  beaten Herefordshire Council before.

Back in 2011 the Land Registry ruled in Alan’s favour over a 10-year right of access row relating to his home on the Common.

Then, the council’s case against was said by the Land Registry to be based on a “fundamental misconception.”

Now, he says, he waits on the hope that the council and the courts will see the wood for the trees.