What do you want from Commons?

After all, having had exclusive access to around half the commons for just £100 a year, fixed since 1946, was just too good to be true.

Perhaps if the clubs had renegotiated a more equitable settlement some years ago, they would not now be facing a council that if not actually out for blood is certainly seeking to generate cash.

Leaving aside the issues of class, wealth and privilege that talk of golf locally inevitably (and wrongly) generates, there are some fundamental issues at stake here.

While the council manages the commons, can it levy charges on land that it might not technically own? If it is indeed common land, is it right that half of the available 736 vergees – nearly 300 acres – is given over to a single use, access to which is denied to a majority of local residents?

Guernsey has much to thank the Vale Commons Council for. Its defence of the area has been doughty over the years and it has performed its duties hampered by a lack of money.

Yet it presides over an area more than half the size of Herm and, if it has a management and use plan, that is unknown to the majority of people who use and give thanks for the existence of the commons.

This is – or should be – more than a dust up between council and golfers. Some are already saying that if it wasn't for the clubs maintaining the course at their own expense, the area would become overgrown and neglected.

However, many would welcome that. Environmentally, golf courses are bad news and biodiversity is greatly enhanced when close-cropped, artificially fertilized greens give way to natural succession vegetation.

We are not suggesting this should happen, but the ending of the soft lease to the clubs means the most fundamental question can be asked:

What do non-golfing islanders want from their common land?