New Rights to Light Proposed - Consultation Commences

With thanks to Herringtonconsulting.co.uk 

The Law Commission has started consulting on significant changes to the legal regime surrounding rights to light. At this stage the proposals are provisional but the organisation has stressed that the Commission’s final recommendations to the Government will be strongly influenced by responses.

The four provisional proposals are:

• in the future it should no longer be possible to acquire rights to light by prescription
• a new statutory test is proposed to clarify the current law on when courts may order a person to pay damages instead of ordering that person to demolish or stop constructing a building that interferes with a right to light
• new statutory notice procedure is planned requiring those with the benefit of rights to light to make clear whether they intend to apply to the court for an injunction (ordering a neighbouring landowner not to build in a way that infringes their right to light), with the aim of introducing greater certainty into rights to light disputes
• a move to allow the Lands Chamber of the Upper Tribunal to be able to extinguish rights to light that are obsolete or have no practical benefit, with payment of compensation in appropriate cases, as it can do under the present law in respect of restrictive covenants.

The Law Commission said: “This project investigates whether the law by which rights to light are acquired and enforced provides an appropriate balance between the important interests of landowners and the need to facilitate the appropriate development of land.

“It considers the interrelationship of rights to light with the planning system, and examines whether the remedies available to the courts where rights to light are infringed are reasonable, sufficient and proportionate.”

The Commission stressed it wants to introduce “greater certainty and transparency into the law as it relates to rights to light, making disputes simpler, easier and quicker to resolve”.

It also made it clear that it wants to ensure that rights to light do not act as an unnecessary constraint on development: “The availability of modern, good quality residential, office and commercial space is important to the success of increasingly dense, modern town and city centres and to the economy more generally.”

Read the Department for Communities and Local Government news release.

Access the Law Commissionconsultation.

Originally posted on The Planning Portal