We have now received responses to our Freedom of Information (FOI) requests from all three councils. Our requests were essentially variations of the question: “Why have you stopped contributions to the Mitcham Common Conservators?”
Croydon says that they do not hold the information.
Both Merton and Sutton have said that there has never been a formal agreement between any of the councils and the Conservators.
To check this for myself, I wanted to read the minutes of the Conservators’ meetings since 1891. Peter Miles, who had scanned them for his research on the history of Mitcham Golf Club, gave us a memory stick containing the minutes as PDFs, covering 1891 to 2006.
But how do you read 105 years of minutes?
I used artificial intelligence — in particular a “Grok bot” — and set it the task of working through all of the documents.
I started by asking it to look at the Metropolitan Commons Acts, and its response was :
On the face of the Metropolitan Commons (Mitcham) Supplemental Act 1891 and the Scheme it confirmed, Merton, Croydon and Sutton are not under a continuing statutory duty to fund Mitcham Common’s maintenance. The long payment history looks like practice (and, for Croydon, a capped sealed-agreement condition), not a permanent rate precept. Croydon and Sutton have already stopped grants; Merton’s contribution is treated as voluntary. Stopping does not require repeal of the 1891 Act.
I then pointed out that in the second meeting in 1891, the Conservators had raised a precept against the Mitcham Vestry for funds. The bot’s initial response looked promising:
What the 18 July 1891 minutes show At the Conservators’ first meeting (Vestry Hall, Mitcham), with G. P. Bidder in the chair, they resolved that the Clerk issue a precept under the Common Seal to the Overseers of the Parish of Mitcham for £75, payable in two moieties. The same meeting also chased Croydon’s sealed agreement under Scheme cl.6. So your primary source is clear: early Conservators did use precept language against Mitcham parish, and they treated that as a financing step from day one.
The bot asked for more minutes, and I uploaded them all.
Its final conclusion was:-
Full picture, 1891–2006
Bottom line: The minutes confirm a long, real payment culture — but almost entirely as contribution / grant / voted / percentage money. After two early Mitcham Overseers “precepts” (1891–92), that form disappears.
Nothing in the books shows Conservators enforcing a Scheme levy. Boroughs (and predecessors) arrear, condition, reduce, renegotiate, and get chased by representations — which is how discretionary funders behave, not ratepayers under a precept.
Our conclusion then is that there never has been a formal agreement for the local councils to contribute to the maintenance of Mitcham Common, and that the Acts don’t enforce one either.
You can read the full transcript of my conversation with the Grok bot, which I named ‘Law Historian’, by downloading this pdf. It has 30 pages.
The conversation took 4 hours in total.
