Dermot Speight & Ors (as trustees of the Thornaby Angling Association) v Robert James Pickersgill

Facts

The Thornaby Angling Association, one of the largest and oldest angling associations in the region with some 650 members, holds fishing rights over stretches of the River Tees derived from a conveyance dated 6 May 1949, registered as a freehold profit à prendre in gross. Those rights extend to the banks of the river where it splits into a North and South Channel around an island called Dalton Batts, over land at Dalton Woods now owned by the defendant, Mr Pickersgill, together with a right to pass and repass along the banks for fishing purposes and an express right of way over neighbouring land owned by the Woodland Trust. Since the mid-1970s Mr Pickersgill's land has been used for motorcycle trials by the Croft Trials Club. The trustees of the association sued, complaining of four matters: the blocking of a stile giving access along the riverbank (the Stile Claims); erosion and gullies on the riverbank (the State of the Riverbank Claims); the noise, fumes and conduct of trials riders (the Conduct of CTC Members Claims); and the construction in 1992, and alteration in 2020/1, of a causeway across the South Channel to Dalton Batts island which was said to have stopped the flow of water and the passage of fish (the Causeway Claims). The claim was issued in the County Court at Middlesbrough on 1 September 2022 and transferred to Newcastle.