166 thoughts on “Restrictive covenants on property”
Hello,
I recently asked a question on your site but, it disappeared or was removed without answer and I would appreciate your advice on the best course of action with regard to a Restrictive Covenant on my 1930s built property.
My wife (who was joint owner) of our semi detached house passed away several months ago and, having contacted the Land Registry to transfer the property into my sole name, I learned that there is a Restrictive Covenant which, among other things (such as selling alcohol and having a funfair on the land) prohibits the building of an extension to the existing house. When we bought the house in December 1980 there was already a two-story side extension extension erected by the previous owner and, at the time of purchase, no mention of the Covenant was mentioned.
I have tried to discover who the Beneficiary is but without success and the Land Registry does not have this information. I had hoped that the university which owns the farmland to the rear might have some idea as to the Beneficiary but, having contacted them, they too are unable to help. In the copy of deeds which I have, a company name is mentioned and a company of the same name is registered at Companies House but, this particular company was not incorporated until October 1998 and is therefore, seemingly, nothing to do with the Covenantee.
Bearing in mind that, it would seem, the Covenant has already been breached as an extension has already been added and, twelve years ago (with local authority approval) I increased the size of the extension, this complicates my situation.
Ideally I would like to apply for the Covenant to be removed/lifted and I appreciate that this may be complicated and I am aware of the various Tribunal fees.
As I am seemingly unable to trace the Beneficiary, I would welcome advice on my best course of action.
We don’t publish all comments on our website, and sometimes, we also have to amend them before we put them up (for example, we are not going to let someone put potentially defamatory comments about someone else on here). Also the people that contribute to the website are all lawyers, with existing workloads that they have to prioritise, so might not have time to add content to our website, as our existing clients will always come first. We are sorry about that but hope you understand.
We also cannot provide legal advice on our website. We can really only identify general points of law that might apply and until we have considered the matter as a whole, are merely speculating as to the position.
Whether or not you want to mount a challenge to the restrictive covenant would ultimately be a decision for you, but it might not be necessary, if it is genuinely the case that the owner of the land that benefits from the restriction cannot be found. Sometimes, insurance can be obtained to cover the risk of enforcement and the cost of that is not often that much. This often happens during a conveyancing transaction, when the buyer identifies the issue and the seller agrees to buy an insurance policy to cover the risk, passing the same to the seller on completion of the sale. There are also other things to consider regarding whether or not the restrictive covenant is enforceable and by whom.
In reality, it comes down to assessing risk and cost, and making a decision about what to do based on that.
Please can you help me understand what the below means:
full and free right and liberty without obtaining the consent of or making any compensation to the Purchaser or other the owner or owners occupier or occupiers for the time being of the said property hereby conveyed to deal in any manner whatsoever with any of the said adjoining or neighbouring property and to erect and maintain or suffer to be erected or maintained on such land any buildings whatsoever whether such buildings shall or shall not affect or diminish the light or air which may now or at any time or times herefter be enjoyed for or in respect of the said property hereby conveyed or any building for the time being thereon and
We cannot provide specific legal advice on our website. We would also not be comfortable to provide advice on this wording without considering the context and document as a whole.
However, very broadly and subject to the fact that we are not sure what the document is, its full wording or the circumstances of the matter, this does not sound like a restrictive covenant. It sounds like wording from a very old conveyance in relation to a larger piece of land, from which a smaller piece was sold. It seems to give the seller and future owners of that land the right to build what they want on the land that they retained.
Hi there I would appreciate some advice re a restrictive covenant relating to ours ( and we think our neighbours property ). Our house was built back in 1989 in the large garden of a cottage which retained a swathe of land between our plots. A restrictive covenant applied to our property re not building any more than 1 house etc. The properties are access by a shared drive entrance so the covenant also covered the ability to use the drive and the splitting of maintenance costs for the shared proportion between the two properties 50:50. The covenant though also contains a Rider ( we believe ) relating to the Retained Land i.e. the cottage. One of the clauses states : A right of way at all times and for all purposes connected with the reasonable use and enjoyment of the Retained Land as one private residence with or without vehicles over and along the driveway coloured brown on the plan subject to the payment of one half of the expense of repairing and maintaining the same. The current owner of the cottage now wants to squeeze a three bedroom house in between our plot and theirs. I have three questions : 1. The Land Registry shows the covenant recorded against our property but it doesn’t show anything on the Cottages record – should it and if yes, how do we get it shown ? 2. Planning is pending but if they get approval could the above clause prevent them from being able to build or does it just fall away due to there now being more than one private residence ? 3. Obviously, if they build, there will then be 3 properties sharing the driveway which means we will be paying a disproportionate amount of the costs for the maintenance – can we force them to change the covenant.
We cannot provide specific legal advice on our website. We can only identify general principles that might apply to your circumstances. We would need to consider the matter in much more detail before we could give legal advice.
In short, not all rights are always recorded on titles to properties. There can be a number of reasons for this, including simply a mistake by the Land Registry. We would have to consider the titles before we could start to understand why something is not registered.
Planning permission generally has no bearing on the legal position of matters. You can obtain planning permission over a piece of land even if you are not legally able to build on it. All planning permission really is, is confirmation that what is being proposed complies with planning regulations. It is not generally relevant to the legal rights between the parties.
Whether or not there is scope to ask someone to contribute to a cost of something will generally depend on bargaining position. For example, if there is, on the face of it, an ability for someone to prevent someone else from building, there is leverage to say that the person with the benefit of the right will waive their right to enforce it, providing certain stipulations are observed.
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Hello,
I recently asked a question on your site but, it disappeared or was removed without answer and I would appreciate your advice on the best course of action with regard to a Restrictive Covenant on my 1930s built property.
My wife (who was joint owner) of our semi detached house passed away several months ago and, having contacted the Land Registry to transfer the property into my sole name, I learned that there is a Restrictive Covenant which, among other things (such as selling alcohol and having a funfair on the land) prohibits the building of an extension to the existing house. When we bought the house in December 1980 there was already a two-story side extension extension erected by the previous owner and, at the time of purchase, no mention of the Covenant was mentioned.
I have tried to discover who the Beneficiary is but without success and the Land Registry does not have this information. I had hoped that the university which owns the farmland to the rear might have some idea as to the Beneficiary but, having contacted them, they too are unable to help. In the copy of deeds which I have, a company name is mentioned and a company of the same name is registered at Companies House but, this particular company was not incorporated until October 1998 and is therefore, seemingly, nothing to do with the Covenantee.
Bearing in mind that, it would seem, the Covenant has already been breached as an extension has already been added and, twelve years ago (with local authority approval) I increased the size of the extension, this complicates my situation.
Ideally I would like to apply for the Covenant to be removed/lifted and I appreciate that this may be complicated and I am aware of the various Tribunal fees.
As I am seemingly unable to trace the Beneficiary, I would welcome advice on my best course of action.
Many thanks
Thank you for your comment.
We don’t publish all comments on our website, and sometimes, we also have to amend them before we put them up (for example, we are not going to let someone put potentially defamatory comments about someone else on here). Also the people that contribute to the website are all lawyers, with existing workloads that they have to prioritise, so might not have time to add content to our website, as our existing clients will always come first. We are sorry about that but hope you understand.
We also cannot provide legal advice on our website. We can really only identify general points of law that might apply and until we have considered the matter as a whole, are merely speculating as to the position.
Whether or not you want to mount a challenge to the restrictive covenant would ultimately be a decision for you, but it might not be necessary, if it is genuinely the case that the owner of the land that benefits from the restriction cannot be found. Sometimes, insurance can be obtained to cover the risk of enforcement and the cost of that is not often that much. This often happens during a conveyancing transaction, when the buyer identifies the issue and the seller agrees to buy an insurance policy to cover the risk, passing the same to the seller on completion of the sale. There are also other things to consider regarding whether or not the restrictive covenant is enforceable and by whom.
In reality, it comes down to assessing risk and cost, and making a decision about what to do based on that.
Please can you help me understand what the below means:
full and free right and liberty without obtaining the consent of or making any compensation to the Purchaser or other the owner or owners occupier or occupiers for the time being of the said property hereby conveyed to deal in any manner whatsoever with any of the said adjoining or neighbouring property and to erect and maintain or suffer to be erected or maintained on such land any buildings whatsoever whether such buildings shall or shall not affect or diminish the light or air which may now or at any time or times herefter be enjoyed for or in respect of the said property hereby conveyed or any building for the time being thereon and
Thank you for your comment.
We cannot provide specific legal advice on our website. We would also not be comfortable to provide advice on this wording without considering the context and document as a whole.
However, very broadly and subject to the fact that we are not sure what the document is, its full wording or the circumstances of the matter, this does not sound like a restrictive covenant. It sounds like wording from a very old conveyance in relation to a larger piece of land, from which a smaller piece was sold. It seems to give the seller and future owners of that land the right to build what they want on the land that they retained.
Hi there I would appreciate some advice re a restrictive covenant relating to ours ( and we think our neighbours property ). Our house was built back in 1989 in the large garden of a cottage which retained a swathe of land between our plots. A restrictive covenant applied to our property re not building any more than 1 house etc. The properties are access by a shared drive entrance so the covenant also covered the ability to use the drive and the splitting of maintenance costs for the shared proportion between the two properties 50:50. The covenant though also contains a Rider ( we believe ) relating to the Retained Land i.e. the cottage. One of the clauses states : A right of way at all times and for all purposes connected with the reasonable use and enjoyment of the Retained Land as one private residence with or without vehicles over and along the driveway coloured brown on the plan subject to the payment of one half of the expense of repairing and maintaining the same. The current owner of the cottage now wants to squeeze a three bedroom house in between our plot and theirs.
I have three questions :
1. The Land Registry shows the covenant recorded against our property but it doesn’t show anything on the Cottages record – should it and if yes, how do we get it shown ?
2. Planning is pending but if they get approval could the above clause prevent them from being able to build or does it just fall away due to there now being more than one private residence ?
3. Obviously, if they build, there will then be 3 properties sharing the driveway which means we will be paying a disproportionate amount of the costs for the maintenance – can we force them to change the covenant.
Thank you for your comment.
We cannot provide specific legal advice on our website. We can only identify general principles that might apply to your circumstances. We would need to consider the matter in much more detail before we could give legal advice.
In short, not all rights are always recorded on titles to properties. There can be a number of reasons for this, including simply a mistake by the Land Registry. We would have to consider the titles before we could start to understand why something is not registered.
Planning permission generally has no bearing on the legal position of matters. You can obtain planning permission over a piece of land even if you are not legally able to build on it. All planning permission really is, is confirmation that what is being proposed complies with planning regulations. It is not generally relevant to the legal rights between the parties.
Whether or not there is scope to ask someone to contribute to a cost of something will generally depend on bargaining position. For example, if there is, on the face of it, an ability for someone to prevent someone else from building, there is leverage to say that the person with the benefit of the right will waive their right to enforce it, providing certain stipulations are observed.