Right to light is a form of

easement An easement is a Nonpossessory interest in land, nonpossessory right to use or enter onto the real property of another without possessing it. It is "best typified in the right of way which one landowner, A, may enjoy over the land of another, B" ...

English law English law is the common law list of national legal systems, legal system of England and Wales, comprising mainly English criminal law, criminal law and Civil law (common law), civil law, each branch having its own Courts of England and Wales, ...

that gives a long-standing owner of a building with windows a right to maintain an adequate level of illumination. The right was traditionally known as the doctrine of "ancient lights". A right to light can also be granted expressly by

deed A deed is a legal document that is signed and delivered, especially concerning the ownership of property or legal rights. Specifically, in common law, a deed is any legal instrument in writing which passes, affirms or confirms an interest, right ...

, or granted implicitly, for example under the rule in '' Wheeldon v. Burrows'' (1879). In England, the rights to ancient lights are most usually acquired under the Prescription Act 1832. In American common law the doctrine died out during the 19th century, and is generally no longer recognized. Japanese law provides for a comparable concept known as .

Rights

St Pancras and Islington Cemetery - geograph

In effect, the owner of a building with windows that have received natural daylight for 20 years or more is entitled to forbid any construction or other obstruction on adjacent land that would block the light so as to deprive them of adequate illumination through those windows. The owner may build more or larger windows but cannot enlarge their new windows before the new period of 20 years has expired. Once a right to light exists, the owner of the right is entitled to "sufficient light according to the ordinary notions of mankind": '' Colls v. Home & Colonial Stores Ltd'' (1904). Courts rely on expert witnesses to define this term. Since the 1920s, experts have used a method proposed by Percy Waldram to assist them with this. Waldram suggested that ordinary people require one foot-candle of

illuminance In photometry (optics), photometry, illuminance is the total luminous flux incident on a surface, per unit area. It is a measure of how much the incident light illuminates the surface, wavelength-weighted by the luminosity function to correlate ...

(approximately ten lux) for reading and other work involving visual discrimination. This equates to a sky factor (similar to the

daylight factor In architecture, a daylight factor (DF) is the ratio of the light level inside a structure to the light level outside the structure. It is defined as: :''DF = (Ei / Eo) x 100%'' where, ''Ei'' = illuminance due to daylight at a point on the indoor ...

) of 0.2%. Today, Waldram's methods are increasingly subject to criticism, and the future of expert evidence in rights to light cases has been the subject of much debate within the surveying profession. After the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, owners of buildings could gain new rights by registering properties that had been destroyed by

bombing A bomb is an explosive weapon that uses the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. Detonations inflict damage principally through ground- and atmosphere-transmitted mechan ...

, and the period was temporarily increased to 27 years. In the centre of

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, near Chinatown and Covent Garden, particularly in back alleyways, signs saying "Ancient Lights" can be seen marking individual windows. In the early 1930s, the design and construction of

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

's headquarters,

Broadcasting House London Broadcasting House is the headquarters of the BBC, in Portland Place and Langham Place, London. The first radio broadcast from the building was made on 15 March 1932, and the building was officially opened two months later, on 15 May. T ...

, was affected by local residents declaring their right to ancient lights. It resulted in a unique asymmetrical sloped design that allowed sunlight to pass over the building to the residential quarters eastwards, long since demolished and now home to the new Egton Wing. Another factor considered with regard to Ancient Lights refers to the building's surroundings rather than its residents. The convention basically is that if an old building which is marked with 'Ancient Lights' is demolished, then the new building which replaces it cannot be taller than the original building. Owners with rights can give them up in return for financial payment, or courts may award compensation for lost rights instead of stopping adjacent development. Case law from 2010, ''HKRUK II v Heaney'', relating to a commercial development in the centre of

Leeds Leeds is a city in West Yorkshire, England. It is the largest settlement in Yorkshire and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds Metropolitan Borough, which is the second most populous district in the United Kingdom. It is built aro ...

, greatly changed the perceptions of risk to developers associated with right-to-light, particularly in the context of commercial schemes. This case upheld an injunction against a commercial property development, partly because compensation was not an adequate remedy. One consequence of this is that many developers now look to work with local authorities to try to use section 237 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 as a way of potentially avoiding injunctions against schemes that have overriding social or economic advantages to an area. The Law Commission of England and Wales undertook a review of the law and practice of rights to light and reported to Parliament in 2014 with several recommendations and a draft Bill including: a statutory notice procedure which would allow landowners to require their neighbours to tell them within a specified time if they intend to seek an injunction to protect their right to light, or to lose the potential for that remedy to be granted; a statutory test to clarify when courts may order damages to be paid rather than halting development or ordering demolition; an updated version of the procedure that allows landowners to prevent their neighbours from acquiring rights to light by prescription; amendment of the law governing where an unused right to light is treated as abandoned; and a power for a tribunal to discharge or modify obsolete or unused rights to light. The Commission did not recommend that prescription should be abolished as a means of acquiring rights to light.

United States

Under United States tort law, in '' Fontainebleau Hotel Corp. v. Forty-Five Twenty-Five, Inc.'' (1959) the Florida District Courts of Appeal stated that the "ancient lights" doctrine had been unanimously repudiated in the United States. In 1984, voters in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

passed Proposition K, which bans construction of any building over 40 feet (12.2 m) high that casts a shadow on a public park, unless the Planning Commission decides the shadow is insignificant.

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

has similar laws against the casting of shadows on Boston Common, the Public Garden, and other important public open spaces. In 2016, the Eneref Institute in Washington, DC launched the Right To Daylight campaign to promote the idea that daylight is a natural right.

Rights

United States

See also

References

Further reading