Law Commission outlines notice procedure in reforms to rights to light

The Law Commission has recommended a statutory notice procedure allowing landowners to require their neighbours to tell them within a specified time if they intend to seek an injunction to protect their right to light, or to lose the potential for that remedy to be granted.

Other recommendations made by the Government’s law reform advisory body, following its Rights to Light consultation, included that there should be:

  • a statutory test to clarify when courts may order damages to be paid rather than halting development or ordering demolition;
  • an updated version of the procedure that allows landowners to prevent their neighbours from acquiring rights to light by prescription;
  • amendment of the law governing where an unused right to light is treated as abandoned; and
  • a power for the Lands Chamber of the Upper Tribunal to discharge or modify obsolete or unused rights to light.

The Law Commission also said that it did not recommend that prescription should be abolished as a means of acquiring rights to light. This represented a different position to that which it advanced as a provisional recommendation in its consultation paper and was a result of responses that it received during the consultation process.



The law reform body added: “Our recommendations in relation to the statutory test for when a court may grant damages in lieu of an injunction take account of the Supreme Court’s decision in Coventry v Lawrence, which was handed down between our consultation ending and final report being published.”

The Law Commission said it anticipated an interim response from the Department for Communities and Local Government within six months of publication and a final response within a year, in line with the Law Commission’s Protocol with the Lord Chancellor.

The recommedations in this report depend in part on implementation of the Law Commission’s proposals made in its 2011 report, Making Land Work: Easements, Covenants and Profits à Prendre

“We hope that Government will see merit in both sets of proposals and consider implementing them as a package of reform,” it said.

The Law Commission's report can be found here.