How We Work
By Commoners for Commoners.
From the Grassroots
Membership Organisation
The Federation is a grassroots organisation, open to all Commoners’ Associations and commoners in Cumbria and the north of England. We have over 500 members from Cumbria, Lancashire, Northumberland and Durham.
Governance
We are governed by a constitution and a democratic local structure. To ensure a broad representation, Cumbria is divided into 10 local regions, each of which has one representative. The remaining committee places include representatives from commons owners, Northumberland, and Lancashire commoners. We also co-opt committee members with specialist skills and expertise.
Our constitution is available to download. Constitution – as amended 2011 AGM
The Committee
The 2022 committee is as follows:
Office Holders:
- Chairman – Joe Relph, Non-regional
- Treasurer – Dave Smith, Eastern Fells
- Administrator – Viv Lewis
Committee Members:
- John Atkinson, Lakes South West
- Ernest Coulthard, Kirkby Stephen
- Harry Hutchinson, Howgills
- Carl Walters, Lakes North Central
- Gavin, Craig & Mathew Fearon, Lakes Central
- John Nichol & Claire Whitaker, Lakes West
- John Rowland, Lakes North
- Matt Jenkinson, Crosby
- Will Rawling, Non-regional
- William Steele, Non-regional
- Jeanette Moscrop, Non-regional
- Ian Gorst, Lancashire
- Charles Raine, Northumberland
- John Turner, Owner Representative
- Julia Aglionby, Co-opted
- Jo Edwards, Co-opted
- Andrew Humphries, Co-opted
- Maurice Hall, Co-opted
The committee meets on average 4 times a year.
“It is not necessarily those lands which are the most fertile or most favoured in climate that seem to me the happiest, but those in which a long adaptation between man and his environment has brought about the best qualities of both; in which the landscape has been moulded by numerous generations of one race, and in which the landscape in turn has moulded the race to its own character’.
T.S. Eliot, After Strange Gods 1933