An Education In Selling School Land

It isn't often that the senior courts pronounce on the School Sites Acts, so the Supreme Court's recent judgment in Rittson-Thomas v Oxfordshire County Council [2021] UKSC 13 is welcome. The judgment is essential reading where any local education authority seeks to sell school land that may originally have been donated or sold for educational purposes under the School Sites Act 1841. It also provides useful guidance for the interpretation of older statutes.

Brief background to the School Sites Acts

The School Sites Act 1841 ("the Act") allowed for the creation of statutory trusts by which benefactors could donate up to one acre of land for use as a school. Sometimes land donated under the Act was already being used as schools, albeit located on private land; other donations allowed the creation of an altogether new school, often paid for by subscriptions of other charitably minded persons in the locality. Successive legislation resulted in sites originally conveyed