Supreme Court to rule on future of wild camping on Dartmoor

The UK Supreme Court will tomorrow decide whether the public has a legal right to wild camp on Dartmoor without landowner permission.

The judgment, due at 9.45am on Wednesday 21 May, follows a long-running legal battle that has raised fundamental questions about public access to the countryside.

Campaigners say the decision will be pivotal not just for Dartmoor, but for wider rights of access across England.

In January 2023, hedge fund manager Alexander Darwall and his wife Diana won a High Court ruling that overturned the assumed right to wild camp on Dartmoor, the only place in England where it had been permitted without landowner consent. 

The judgment triggered national backlash and sparked one of the largest countryside access protests in decades, with more than 3,500 people joining a march across the moor.

Six months later, the Court of Appeal reversed that ruling, declaring that wild camping falls under the definition of “open-air recreation” in the Dartmoor Commons Act 1985. 

The Darwalls then took the case to the Supreme Court, which heard arguments in October 2024.

Campaign groups say the case highlights a deeper problem with public access law in England.

Gillian Healey, speaking for the campaign group The Stars are for Everyone, said: “We anxiously await the court's decision. That one wealthy landowner, Alexander Darwall, has been able to bring this challenge, and was able to temporarily remove a right that belonged to everyone demonstrates how England’s system of access is utterly broken.”

Guy Shrubsole from Right to Roam added: “Whatever the outcome, the Labour Government must now pass a new Right to Roam Act to defend and extend the public’s rights to responsibly access nature in England. Ministers must urgently change the law to protect the right to wild camp on Dartmoor from future challenges and expand the public’s right of responsible access to the wider countryside.”

Tom Usher, from the Dartmoor Preservation Association, called the ruling “generationally important,” saying: “The implications of this impending judgment on backpack camping are generationally important for public access on Dartmoor, it goes to the heart of what Dartmoor National Park should be for; wild and free for all.”

The Supreme Court’s decision will define the legal status of wild camping on Dartmoor.