CHARTERED BUILDING SURVEYORS
Specialising in boundaries in England and Wales-
where they are and what rights exist across them. Working on the edge -
facilitating construction in the urban environment, helping to maximise
site use, minimise cost and delay caused by neighbours, and protecting
the rights of owners of land and buildings from building works and
associated activities nearby.
Rights to light
Anyone who has had uninterrupted use of something over someone else's land for twenty years without consent, openly, and without threat, and without an interruption greater than a year, may gain a right to it against the other owner.
The person making use of it is called a dominant owner, the one over whose land the use is made is the servient owner, and the use is an easement..
With light, the extent of the right acquired is that which is considered by the Courts as reasonable and is usually taken to be som much light as is reasonable according to the ordinary notions of mankind. What this effectively means is that the right can be acquired to have half a room lit by at least 2% of the sky.
If the servient owner wants then to construct a building which will reduce the light to a less than acceptable level, thereby injuring the dominant owner's right to light, the dominant owner has the right to an injunction to prevent the injury.
Whether an injunction will be granted depends on many factors but if the injury is small and capable of compensation and an injunction would be oppressive, compensation will be awarded instead.There are therefore effectively three levels of injury to light, non-actionable where the level of light may be reduced without any problem to the developer, compensatable where the level of light may be reduced but with the payment of compensation, and injunctable where the level of light may not be reduced at all except with the consent of the servient owner which is usually only given at a blackmail price.
Whether a right has been acquired, whether what degree of injury will be caused, and how much compensation should be paid, are matters on which specialist professional advice is almost invariably needed and I shall not therefore go into it in any more detail here.
DAVID BOWDEN & ASSOCIATES CHARTERED BUILDING SURVEYORS
27 Selby Road London E11 3LT UK Tel +44 (0) 20 7377 9494
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pages ©David A Bowden BSc MRICS ACIArb 1996- 2003
part Crown Copyright 1996 see notice
Web
site first opened November 1997
Last updated June 1999