Edward Peters & Philip Sissons round up a selection of recent property cases
- Modification of restrictive covenants.
- Costs guidance in the First-tier Tribunal.
- Residential property dispute deployment pilot.
- Horizontal and vertical boundaries.
The Upper Tribunal has a discretionary jurisdiction to modify or discharge restrictive covenants under s 84 of the Law of Property Act 1925 (LPA 1925). The question of whether the tribunal can and will exercise that jurisdiction in a variety of different factual circumstances is often of substantial financial and personal importance, and continues to produce a steady flow of decisions.
In the recent case of Re Geall [2018] UKUT 154 (LC), the Upper Tribunal decided to exercise its jurisdiction pursuant to s 84 to modify a restrictive covenant to permit the conversion of a barn into a new dwelling house.
The applicant was the owner of property comprising a bungalow and a barn which was used for agricultural storage. The land was subject to restrictive covenants which restricted use of the land to a single private dwelling house. The applicant obtained planning permission to covert the barn to a
