Cases - Williams v Sandy Lane (Chester) Ltd
Record details
- Name
- Williams v Sandy Lane (Chester) Ltd
- Date
- [2006]
- Citation
- EWCA Civ 1738
- Legislation
- Keywords
- Commercial property - landlord and tenant - easements - rights of way
- Summary
-
The appellants owned a freehold property, and in 1976 took over a 1908 lease of a part of the land to the north, including a boathouse, together with a right of access from the road across the land to the north. In 1984, the appellants wrote to the owner of the land to the north, claiming to have acquired an easement over that land. In 1990, the lease was renewed, and subsequently continued by virtue of the 1954 Act.
In 2003, the land to the north was sold to the respondents, who wanted to develop it for housing. The appellants agreed to relinquish the tenancy of the boathouse when planning consent for housing was granted, but then sought a declaration that they were entitled to use a track that crossed the land to the north to reach their property (the primary route) together with a secondary route across the common boundary. They also claimed to be entitled, by prescription, to pass over the secondary route, and also sought an injunction restraining any interference with the exercise of those rights.
The Court of Appeal held that the appellants were entitled to the rights of way claimed over both the primary and secondary routes. Where the grant of a tenancy of servient land (the land to the north) predated the use by or on behalf of the owner of the dominant land, it was necessary to ask whether the freeholder of the servient land had knowledge at or before the date of the grant (if, with knowledge of the use, the owner of the servient land had granted a tenancy on terms that removed any power to prevent that use, it could properly be said to have acquiesced in it). From at least 1984, the owner of the land to the north had had knowledge that the primary route was being used to gain access from the road to the appellants’ property, and so that owner had acquiesced in the use.
Further, the appellants had not abandoned the right to use the secondary route, as a dominant owner did not lose its acquired prescriptive right if it ceased to use the route for many years without an intention to abandon it. A right of way was not lost merely by non-use, even if the non-use had extended over many years. There was no intention by the appellants to abandon the right to use the secondary route.