Definitive Map Orders: Consistency Guidelines
Annex 2 - Documentary Evidence Paper
by Christine Wilmore
Annex 2 Part 7
7 CONCLUSION
The process of data analysis described above requires a high degree
of detail and an increasingly intensive research focus.
It is important to distinguish the evidence from the inferences which
may be drawn from the evidence. McCullough J suggested an approach
to moving from evidence to inference:
“[give] careful consideration of what should prima facie be drawn from a fact and then see whether, upon consideration, this should be rebutted or whether it should ripen into an inference upon which further conclusions may in turn be based.” Footnote 18
What is looked for is a general picture of whether the route seemed important enough to get into these documents fairly regularly. A one-off appearance could be an error . . . consistent depiction over a number of years is a positive indication. Just as one paragraph from a record should never be considered in isolation from the rest of the document, so one piece of evidence should not be considered in isolation.
The problem for those hearing cases is to bring out the crucial issues, making sense out of the mass of detail and identifying the sources of evidence which justify the argument. The detail must be there, or the entire conclusion will be undermined, but the detail is not the conclusion.
Behind the evidence lies what happened. The evidence is not what happened, it is merely evidence of what happened. Whilst decision letters cannot ‘tell stories’, unless there is an understanding of the historical reality of which the documents are but evidence, the decision letter merely deals with a pile of isolated assertions. It is finding the reality behind the evidence which can give inspectors confidence in their interpretation of individual items of evidence: it ‘fits’ the pieces together. Finding that key which makes sense of the evidence presented is not always easy. Any story needs to be tested against the totality of the evidence. The documents themselves are evidence of historical events and status, not a substitute for history. Stepping back from the detailed evidence to identify the historical story can be a difficult task, but it is vital. Only by doing that can you feel confident that you have understood what history is able to tell you.
18, West Yorkshire MBC v Harry Brown (1983)
Chris Willmore
Barrister,
Lecturer in Law, Bristol University
July 2002
April 2003
