Elizabeth Cooke & Colin Oakley shed some light on the Law Commission’s project on appurtenant rights
We published our latest report, “Making Land Work: Easements, Covenants and Profits à Prendre” (Law Com No 327) (the Easements Report) last month. It represents a substantial piece of work; our project examined the general law of easements, covenants and profits à prendre (“profits”), how they come into being, and how they come to an end. This article looks at the genesis of that project, and at some new, closely related work that is to be undertaken in the future.
In the beginning
The project was a logical successor to the Commission’s previous work, undertaken with Land Registry, that culminated in the Land Registration Act 2002. With the registration of title wrapped up, it made sense to look in detail at appurtenant interests in land. So there is a focus on registration in the Easements Report, and indeed some of its recommendations relate only to registered title. Of those, the most important relates to the “unity of seisin” rule: the rule that easements and
