Restrictive covenants: what’s reasonable?

• Davies-Gilbert v Goacher is a recent High Court authority which should help to guide property practitioners through the minefield of reasonableness in the context of refusal of consent under restrictive covenants.

Restrictive covenant disputes are often a particularly bitter type of neighbour dispute.

Restrictive covenants affect landowners, both urban and rural, up and down the country. In practice, it is relatively rare to see a Land Registry title with no covenants on it and for every plot of land burdened there ought, at least in theory, to be a plot of land which benefits. Given that the benefitting and burdened land should be near to each other, a dispute about a covenant will invariably also be a dispute between neighbours. This can have the effect of turning what might at first appear to be a dry legal dispute about old drafting into something where passions can run high.

Disputes about qualified covenants