The fifth and final day of the Public Inquiry, 14th August 2018, heard the closing submissions of the Objector to the Order (Byron Court Management Company), the Applicant (The Gateacre Society) and the Order Making Authority (Liverpool City Council). BCMC had, on 13th April, requested a second adjournment to allow them to engage the services of a barrister, and to try and find a copy of the Head Lease which would confirm the Company's status as a 'legal owner' of the land over which the disputed path runs. Two weeks before the resumption of the Inquiry, BCMC circulated copies of the Counsel's Advice they had received, including copies of various legal Case Reports which they considered were relevant to their arguments. A conclusion of the advice note was that the Head Lease, although drafted, had never been registered, meaning that the Company may not have had the legal power to turn people away from the footpath.

The BCMC's Closing Statement, or 'Public Hearing Summary' as it was entitled, was 16 pages long and took their advocate 50 minutes to read out. Amongst other things, it alleged that "There has to be question over the reliability of the evidence given by the witnesses on behalf of the Gateacre Society" and "We would ask that no weight be given to any user form or submission where the person supplying it did not give evidence at the hearing". He asked the rhetorical question: "Was their evidence given with an over exuberance to win a cause, and would they have given the same evidence if under oath?". His conclusion was that "This was simply a coordinated approach by the Gateacre and Woolton Societies to gain support to enable a few of their members and friends who live nearby to take a slightly more convenient route than the one offered by the nearby public footpath".

The Gateacre Society's Closing Statement, presented by Mike Chitty, was much more succinct. It reiterated the Society's argument that the omission of the path from the City Council's initial Definitive Map of Public Rights of Way was a mistake, and the failure of the Council to add it to the map later on was the result of lack of resources (in particular the lack of a full-time Rights of Way Officer). In the Society's opinion, the use of the path by pedestrians since 1979, with the acquiescence of the land owner (Liverpool City Council) was already, by 1999, sufficient to establish it as a Public Right of Way. Furthermore any challenges by residents of Byron Court after it was built in 2001 had no legal validity, because Hayne Securities, not the BCMC, was the sole owner of the car parking area over which the path runs. He emphasised that the Gateacre Society had not instigated the opposition to the wall, or controlled the way in which people filed in User Evidence Forms. It was the City Council who insisted that forms be channelled via the Society. He concluded by stating that the Society had lodged the Claim, and participated in the Public Inquiry, on behalf of a wide range of individuals - hundreds of people, not just a few - who had suffered inconvenience since the wall was built, and would be inconvenienced in future if the wall were to remain. He asked that the Order be confirmed.

Continued . . .