Articles tagged as Land Law
Latest Law Papers tagged as Land Law
Including law essays, dissertations, problem questions, case summaries, and law lectures, suitable for law students working towards their LLB / LLM qualifications or those studying for the new SQE.
Gissing v Gissing [1970] UKHL 3
Case Summaries
The House of Lords rejected a wife’s claim to share her former husband’s house because the evidence did not establish shared beneficial ownership. The speeches explain common intention and direct and indirect contributions. ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
G & C Kreglinger v New Patagonia Meat & Cold Storage Co Ltd [1913] UKHL 1
Case Summaries
The House of Lords upheld a five-year sheepskin purchase option after repayment of the associated loan, treating it as an independent bargain rather than a clog on redemption. ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
Donohoe v Ingram [2006] EWHC 282 (Ch)
Case Summaries
The court rejected postponement of a bankrupt’s jointly owned home sale until 2017, left the wider Article 8 question undecided, and granted a short extension to 18 April 2006. ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
Gore and Snell v Carpenter (1990) 60 P & CR 456
Case Summaries
Negotiations about dividing jointly owned properties did not sever the beneficial joint tenancies because the proposed settlement remained provisional. ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
Binions v Evans [1972] EWCA Civ 6
Case Summaries
Purchasers who bought a cottage subject to a widow’s right to remain could not evict her. The judges differed on whether her right was a licence or a life interest. ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
Alexander v Mercouris [1979] 1 WLR 1270
Case Summaries
The Court of Appeal considered when the duty under the Defective Premises Act 1972 arose, where house-conversion work was taken on before the Act commenced but completed afterwards. ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
Sturges v Bridgman (1879) 11 Ch D 852
Case Summaries
Why long use of noisy equipment did not establish a prescriptive right: Sturges explains nuisance, locality and the effect of later development. ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
Amsprop Trading Ltd v Harris Distribution Ltd [1997] 1 WLR 1025
Case Summaries
Amsprop explains why benefiting from a covenant is not enough to enforce it under section 56 of the Law of Property Act 1925. ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
Lovett v Fairclough (1991) 61 P & CR 385
Case Summaries
A claimed fishing right failed where successive users had not shown the necessary transfer of rights. A profit in gross is a property right held independently of land. ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
R (Beresford) v City of Sunderland [2003] UKHL 60
Case Summaries
Beresford allowed village-green registration after long recreational use. This summary explains the 2003 reasoning and why the Supreme Court rejected it in Barkas [2014] UKSC 31. ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
Leakey v National Trust [1979] EWCA Civ 5
Case Summaries
The National Trust was liable for failing to respond reasonably to a known natural hazard. The Court of Appeal explained the limits of an occupier’s duty to protect neighbouring land. ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
Avon Freeholds Limited v Cresta Court E RTM Company Limited [2026] UKSC 31
Case Summaries
A landlord sought to stop the transfer of the right to manage a block of flats because the right to manage company had not given one qualifying tenant a notice of invitation to participate before serving its claim notice. The Supreme Court held that this procedural failure did not invalidate the claim notice or give […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
Aviva Investors Ground Rent GP Ltd and another v Williams and others [2023] UKSC 6
Case Summaries
Long residential leases stated each flat’s percentage share of service costs but allowed the landlord to make reasonable changes. When the landlord increased some shares, the tenants said the power itself was void. The Supreme Court distinguished the landlord’s decision about how to divide the costs from the tribunal’s power to decide whether the resulting […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
R (on the application of Day) v Shropshire Council [2023] UKSC 8
Case Summaries
A parish council sold part of a public recreation ground without advertising the sale or considering objections. The Supreme Court held that the public’s statutory right to use the land was not extinguished by a general protection for purchasers, and continued to bind the private buyer. Planning permission for housing, granted without regard to that […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
Rakusen v Jepsen and others [2023] UKSC 9
Case Summaries
Under the version of the Housing and Planning Act 2016 before the Court, could occupiers recover rent from a superior landlord who had not granted their tenancies? The Supreme Court held that the power to make a rent repayment order applied only to the landlord under the tenancy in question. Rent repayment orders allow the […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
Secretary of State for Transport v Curzon Park Ltd and others [2023] UKSC 30
Case Summaries
Four adjoining sites were acquired for the HS2 terminus in Birmingham. Each owner claimed that its land could otherwise have been developed for student housing. Assessing one site in isolation risked assuming the same demand several times. The Supreme Court explained which evidence about neighbouring sites could be used when estimating the planning prospects of […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
T W Logistics Ltd v Essex County Council and another [2021] UKSC 4
Case Summaries
For more than twenty years, people walked and played beside the water at Mistley while lorries crossed the same concrete quay. The port owner objected when the land was registered as a town or village green. If these two uses had coexisted before registration, could criminal legislation protecting greens now make its ordinary operations unlawful? […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
Rittson-Thomas and others v Oxfordshire County Council [2021] UKSC 13
Case Summaries
The Supreme Court held that land granted under the School Sites Act 1841 for Nettlebed School did not cease to be used for the Act’s purposes, and therefore did not revert, when the school moved to new premises before the old site was sold, because the County Council intended throughout to apply the proceeds under […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
R (on the application of Fylde Coast Farms Ltd (formerly Oyston Estates Ltd)) v Fylde Borough Council [2021] UKSC 18
Case Summaries
When a neighbourhood plan is made in stages, which decision starts the six-week clock for judicial review? Fylde Coast Farms challenged the completed plan on time. Its complaint, however, was directed at an earlier decision about an examiner’s recommendations. The plan and the missed time limit The developer owned land at Lytham Moss and wanted […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
R (on the application of Samuel Smith Old Brewery (Tadcaster) and others) v North Yorkshire County Council [2020] UKSC 3
Case Summaries
When North Yorkshire County Council granted permission for a six-hectare extension of a limestone quarry in the Green Belt, objectors said the planning officer had wrongly left visual impact out of the question whether the development would preserve the Green Belt’s openness. The Supreme Court held that openness in the National Planning Policy Framework is […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
Duval v 11-13 Randolph Crescent Ltd [2020] UKSC 18
Case Summaries
A landlord promised each flat owner that, if asked and put in funds, it would enforce the covenants in the other flats' leases. The Supreme Court held that the landlord of 11-13 Randolph Crescent could not keep that promise and at the same time license one owner to remove part of a load-bearing wall in […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
Dill v Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government and another [2020] UKSC 20
Case Summaries
The Supreme Court held that inclusion in the statutory list does not by itself decide whether an object is a “building” under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990. An inspector hearing an appeal against refusal of listed building consent or a listed building enforcement notice may consider that question, using the planning […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
Alexander Devine Children’s Cancer Trust v Housing Solutions Ltd [2020] UKSC 45
Case Summaries
The Supreme Court refused to modify covenants forbidding building on open land beside a children's hospice, so that 13 affordable homes already built there in deliberate breach could lawfully remain and be occupied. The Upper Tribunal had been entitled to find that blocking that use was contrary to the public interest, but it had wrongly […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
London Borough of Lambeth v Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government and others [2019] UKSC 33
Case Summaries
The Supreme Court allowed Lambeth Council’s appeal and held that a 2014 permission under section 73 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 continued to restrict a Streatham retail store to non-food goods. Although the decision notice did not restate that limit among its numbered conditions, its natural meaning was that the Council had […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
The Manchester Ship Canal Company Ltd v Vauxhall Motors Ltd (formerly General Motors UK Ltd) [2019] UKSC 46
Case Summaries
A missed payment of £50 led the owner of the Manchester Ship Canal to terminate a perpetual licence under which Vauxhall drained its Ellesmere Port factory into the canal. The rights were agreed to be worth more than £300,000 a year. The Supreme Court held that those rights were possessory, so the court had jurisdiction […] ...
Last modified: 4th Nov 2026
