Nicholas Dobson delves into some murky & uncertain areas of highway law
- The statutory order transferred highways to TfL from former London highway authorities only to the extent that ownership was then vested in each council as a former highway authority.
- There is no single meaning of ‘highway’ and its meaning is to be taken from the relevant context.
Back in the 1940s, blues singer, Big Bill Broonzy, sang that he had the key to the highway. Frank Sinatra though had ‘travelled each and every highway’, while Paul McCartney seemed stuck on a long and winding road leading to his lover’s door. But none of them had to grapple with the legal meaning of the term ‘highway’. That task fell to the Supreme Court on 5 December 2018 in London Borough of Southwark and another v Transport for London [2018] UKSC 63, [2018] All ER (D) 18 (Dec).
Background
On the face of it, the case merely concerned an esoteric piece of statutory interpretation on the transfer of highway authority responsibilities from constituent London boroughs to Transport
