Right to Light & a side return extension

[MumOfThrMoos]

Does anyone have any experience of being sued for or suing your neighbour for the common law right to light?

We are having a bog standard, single storey, sloped roof side return extension on our London terrace. The wall of our extension will be replacing a tall fence along the boundary of the two dwellings.

We have planning permission and a party wall award in place. Planning permission was granted just under 3 years ago. We gave notice re party walls around mid July and the award was made a few weeks ago. We started work on the demolition of an existing single storey extension at the back (which is not being replaced) last week & are now breaking up the concrete of the side return to locate drains so that we can move any required inspection chambers.

When we emailed our neighbours a couple of weeks ago, to let them know we were starting the work, one of them told us that he and another neighbour (the ground floor of the neighbouring house has been split into two flats) were in conversation with their insurance company around suing us under right to light.

Right to light seems to me like an open ended sword of Damocles. I don't believe we are impinging on their right to light ad there is already the two storey outrigger of the building sitting begin our side return and the side return won't be impacting it; however, this is now keeping me awake at night.

Half of London is getting these side return extensions and i cannot believe that if it's possible to successfully sue for right to light on a side return that it wouldn't have been done by now and there would be case law. Does anyone know if this has ever been an issue with this kind of extension?

If a right to light survey were not in excess of £2-4K we would get one done but I do know if they want to sue us they will need to pay for the survey, which I guess is why they haven't done it already.

Any thoughts?

I'm taking a bit of comfort that no one has any experience of this and it's therefore rare....

Itcaveat this by saying I am not a lawyer, but I think that planning was the stage where they should have objected to this and that it's now too late. Did you talk to them before you put in the application and show them what you planned to do?

No we didn't at planning but we did go through it with them all at the point of party wall.

My understanding that planning permission does not trump their right to light but that if they were to apply for an injunction at the point the courts would wonder why they hadn't mentioned it before. They have never formally made a claim, or said that they want the walls to be lower etc, etc. In fact one neighbour has refused to talk to us and when we invited them round to talk about it over the summer, didn't come.

You're correct that right to light is not trumped by PP.

It may well be that because they didn't object to PP then they may simply be awarded compensation rather than you being ordered to demolish a built structure. However I'm sure you don't want to go to the expense given the risk.

The only way to deal with it is to bite the bullet and pay for an expert to assess on the amount of light lost and if that breaches their rights. If you are building a single storey extension and it goes no higher than the existing wall it does seem to me that they would be hard pressed to demonstrate any loss of light.

Google ‘Aztec Architecture Right to Light’ - some (possibly) useful info there.

Also try ‘PBC Today; Rights to Light at a Glance’. You may need to have a survey done - the site may give valuable info on what you can expect if your neighbours sue.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings but an acquaintance of mine was successfully sued by his neighbours for loss of light caused by the building of their side return extension. They had to pay a Six figure sum in compensation. This is despite the fact that the local council had granted planning permission. Right to lights is a separate issue to PP.
I think that the neighbours have to be in situ for at least something like 20 years before they have a right to claim loss of light though.
But take this seriously because as I say it can happen!

I am slightly startled reading this. Some years back my mother was trying to oppose planning permission for extensions that were going to seriously impact her small terraced cottage. She was told that she couldn't use right to light as an objection, that it "didn't exist any more"!

[in the end though plans were passed the owners had so annoyed both neighbours that they realised that they couldn't actually build anything because no-one would give them access to do it ... sold up in the end]

Meant to say, this was nowhere near London.

OP hope you can get things sorted ok.

That's interesting golden goddess - From advice from the people we've contacted and the case law the way compensation is calculated that extension must have added an enormous amount of value to the house - ours isn't adding that much value (we've taken down an existing single storey extension that came out further).

Compensation is based an a calculation between profit made by the offending developer and reduction in value of the offender against property.

But that's the first mention from anyone of a side return infill extension having a right to light issue.

Yes the case I'm referring to was in London and in an area where your average 4 bedroom
Bog standard Victorian terrace will go for around £1.6m. The extension probably did add value to the house, tho no more than around 10%. I also know that my acquaintance had to sign some
Kind of a non disclosure deal in which they swore never to disclose any details of the sum paid! But i know it was over £100k