Polite walkers may lose their green space to a housing development – because they stopped to allow golfers to play their game.

Campaigners say they are deeply disappointed by an Appeal Court ruling that land at Redcar cannot be registered as a village green, because people walking on Coatham Common had not been assertive enough when encountering golfers. Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council’s case was upheld in an appeal against their refusal to grant the land village green status.

The case was brought by Kevin Lewis, following an unsuccessful High Court application to force the authority to register the common. The Open Spaces Society supported the appeal.

The society’s case officer Nicola Hodgson said: “Mr Lewis applied to the High Court early last year against the council’s refusal to register the land as a green. His application was dismissed so he appealed to the Court of Appeal. Sadly, on 15 January, three judges rejected that application.

“In order to claim land as a green, the applicant must show that local people have used the land for 20 years without being stopped or asking permission. They need to demonstrate that they have used it as though they had the right to do so.

“In this case the land is under threat of development by Persimmon Homes, but it was used as a golf course until 2002. Redcar & Cleveland Council claimed that, in using the land for recreation, the public deferred to the golfers. Walkers would stop and wait while the golfers were playing a shot.

“In the leading judgment, Lord Justice Dyson ruled that, in order for the land to qualify as a green, the use by the public must be sufficient to bring home to the reasonable owner that the local inhabitants have been asserting a right to use the land.

“If the people adjust their behaviour, they give the impression to the owner that they are not claiming a right to do what they are doing. Lord Dyson concluded that, because the public gave way to the golfers, the inhabitants had not sufficiently asserted that right.

“However, he did say that the matter was one of ‘fact and degree’ and that if there had been give and take on both sides, the outcome might have been different.”

Ms Hodgson added: “It is devastating that, just because the users were polite to the golfers, rather than the other way round, the public has been penalised. That politeness in giving way means that the land will not be registered as a green and is therefore threatened by development.

“It’s a sad day for the people of Redcar that this case has been lost.”

Once land is registered as a town or village green, it is protected from development under two Acts of Parliament passed in the 19th century.