Rights of Light: An Update to the Legislation
Rights of Light: An Update to the Legislation
In December 2014, the Law Commission published its final report and draft bill, setting out its recommendations on the reform of this area of law.
This follows the consultation that it carried out between February and May 2013. Jeff Elphee, partner in IBB’s Commercial Real Estate team, reported on this in his article in March 2013.
The key recommendations in the report are:
- A statutory notice procedure to allow landowners to require neighbours to tell them, within a specified time, if they intend to seek an injunction to protect their right to light, or lose the opportunity for that remedy to be granted.
- An updated procedure that allows landowners to prevent their neighbours from acquiring rights to light by prescription. This is a major change from the earlier consultation paper
- Amending the law governing where an unused right to light is treated as abandoned.
- A power for the Lands Chamber of the Upper Tribunal to discharge or modify obsolete or unused rights to light.
- A statutory test to clarify when courts may order damages to be paid, rather than halting development or ordering demolition.
These recommendations and the draft bill will not take full effect unless the government decides to implement them.
We will provide a further update as and when there are any developments.
For more information please contact Jeff Elphee, partner in IBB’s Real Estate team on on jeff.elphee@ibblaw.co.ukor 01895 207950 or Jon Mowbray, partner in IBB’s Real Estate Dispute Resolution team on 01895 207988 or jon.mowbray@ibblaw.co.uk. Jon has written a number of other articles on rights of light which you may be interested to read.
Please see below:
