Easements, Covenants & Profits

Law Commission report aims to simplify, modernise and enhance the law

 

In its report Making Land Work: Easements, Covenants and Profits à Prendre published on 8th June 2011, the Law Commission recommends reform where it is needed, while preserving those aspects of the law that function as they should. Says Law Commissioner Elizabeth Cooke, “We are recommending an overhaul of law that is ancient, complicated and unfit for modern society and the land registration system. Our draft Bill would bring this area of the law into the 21st century.”

 

The recommendations would not affect the validity and enforceability of existing rights, and would:

• make it possible for the benefit and burden of positive obligations to be enforced by and against subsequent owners;
• simplify and make clearer the rules relating to the acquisition of easements by prescription (or long use of land) and implication, as well as the termination of easements by abandonment;
• give greater flexibility to developers to establish the webs of rights and obligations that allow modern estates to function;
• facilitate the creation of easements that allow a substantial use of land by the benefiting owner (for example, rights to park a car);
• expand the jurisdiction of the Lands Chamber of the Upper Tribunal to allow for the discharge and modification of easements and profits created post-reform.

To read the report in full click here.

 

For a summary only click here.

 

Date Added: 12th June 2011