“It is convenient,” said Mr Justice Fancourt, with the dry efficiency of a man about to detonate a planning regime, “to start with Dyer’s Case.”
Quite. When in doubt, reach for the Victorians—those masters of soot and sentiment—particularly when navigating that most anachronistic of easements: the right to light. A doctrine born in the age of gas lamps and progress by chimney stack, now battling for breath in a skyline of cranes and crown units.
This case— Cooper v Ludgate House Ltd [2025] EWHC 1724 (Ch) —is more than a fight over blocked bedrooms. It is the collision of private comfort with public ambition, where centuries-old common law meets the impervious alloy of statutory immunity. A tale of two flats and one office block, but also a legal moment: for the first time, the court was asked to weigh whether a right of light, stripped of enforceability by Parliament, should still count in law.
Spoiler: it shouldn’t.
THE LIGHT THAT FADES: FACTS WITH TEETH
The claimants, Mr Cooper and Mr & Mrs Powell, owned flats in Bankside Lofts, a converted warehouse perched stylishly on the east of Hopton Street. Their view once spanned westward across a post-industrial yawning void. But voids, in London, never last.
Enter Arbor: a sleek, 19-storey office tower erected by Ludgate House Ltd (“LHL”), part of the massive Bankside Yards development—a project so vast it stretches from Blackfriars Bridge to the edge of the Tate Modern’s cloakroom queue. Completed in 2022, Arbor now looms over the Lofts, casting long and literal shadows.
The claimants alleged an actionable nuisance through interference with their rights of light. They sought the classic remedy: injunction first, damages if you must.
But the case came burdened with one of those sly legal complications that gives a judge the chance to make law: section 203 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016.
SECTION 203: THE PLANNER’S PARDON
Section 203 is not subtle. It allows developers to override private rights—including rights of light—so long as they’ve ticked the proper procedural boxes with a local authority. The law gives, and the law takes away, and what it takes away here is your ability to stop the skyline from arriving in your living room.
Southwark Council, that dependable workhorse of delegated urbanism, duly passed the requisite resolution. The developers handed them the title to the rest of the site, and the Council handed it back—liberated, as if by priestly magic, from the sins of easement.
The twist? Arbor had already been built before the resolution came into force. It fell outside the protective bubble. A curious legal orphan: not covered, but not unrelated.
The result was that Arbor stood alone in the dock. As the judge dryly noted:
“The Claimants will not be able to rely on their rights of light to prevent that development taking place… but they can seek to enforce their rights against Arbor.”
THREE VERSIONS OF DARKNESS: CS1, CS2, DS1
To prove that Arbor had wronged them, the claimants needed to show it had caused a substantial interference with their rights of light. But what do you compare it to?
The court was offered three competing “scenarios”:
- DS1 (Defendant’s Scenario): count all the light currently visible, even if it will shortly be lost to the looming towers of the rest of Bankside Yards.
- CS1 (Claimants’ Scenario): disregard that doomed light entirely—if you can’t protect it, you can’t count it.
- CS2: a technocratic fudge in which every building gets a share of the blame, like a schoolboy lineup where no one quite owns up.
The judge batted aside CS2 with judicial economy:
“There is no equalisation of the burden of the rights of light… Scenario CS2 is therefore the wrong basis of comparison.”
And then the real question: should the court ignore light that will be lost but has not yet been taken away? Fancourt gave the clearest answer rights of light have seen in years:
“Light that cannot be legally protected should be left out of account.”
In other words: a right without a remedy is no right at all. CS1 triumphed.
ON MEASURING THE MISERY: WALDRAM VERSUS RADIANCE
The judgment then tackled that other recurring irritant of daylight law: how to measure loss.
The claimants stuck with tradition. The Waldram method—devised in the 1920s, beloved of light surveyors, and legally enshrined—remains the benchmark. If less than 50% of a room receives 0.2% of the sky dome, the room is deemed poorly lit.
The defendants favoured the newer Radiance software, a sleek tool born of modern planning principles. But Fancourt was unmoved:
“These methods were not designed or calibrated to measure whether the light remaining after an obstruction is sufficient for the ordinary purposes of occupiers.”
Old light, old method, old judgment.
And in case there was any doubt: Waldram lives.
RELIEF REFUSED: WHEN AN INJUNCTION IS FUTILE
Having found an actionable nuisance, the court faced the question of remedy. The claimants wanted an injunction. But the court declined:
“Would an injunction be an unjustified waste of resources…?”
“Would LHL be able to secure planning permission and then rebuild Arbor with the protection of s.203?”
The answer to both was yes.
The court awarded two forms of compensation:
- Negotiating damages, in lieu of an injunction—a sum reflecting what the claimants could reasonably have extracted to permit the interference;
- And diminution in value damages, for the actual reduction in their property value.
“The Powells should receive £500,000 and Mr Cooper £350,000.”
Not bad for a blocked view—but not, one suspects, what they truly wanted.
Of course, this was a highly fact-specific outcome. Had the developer acted with deceit, or had Arbor not been so nearly complete, the scales might have tipped the other way. Cooper should not be read as a blanket refusal of injunctive relief. But it does confirm the court’s growing willingness—post-Coventry v Lawrence, Fearn, and others—to weigh practicality and public benefit above the sanctity of obstruction.
FOR CONVEYANCERS: THIS SHADOW FALLS ON YOU, TOO
While the litigation unfolded in chancery robes and high rhetoric, its consequences reach all the way down to the conveyancing trenches.
Here’s what every property solicitor and title reviewer should now take from Cooper:
- Not all rights of light are worth the paper they’re printed on. If section 203 has been invoked over adjoining land—even temporarily—those rights may remain on the register but are, in practice, valueless. As Fancourt made plain:
“Other light that the dominant land actually enjoys will not be taken into account if the owner has no effective means of protecting it.”
- Check planning histories. If your client’s flat faces a redevelopment zone where a local authority has been involved, look for telltale signs of a section 203 shuffle. Transfers to and from the Council with 999-year leases back? That’s your red flag.
- Pre-contract enquiries may evolve. Expect to see new questions along the lines of:
“Is the Seller aware of any statutory override of the Property’s rights of light?”
Be ready to respond—factually, legally, and carefully.
- Valuation disputes incoming. Where rights of light were once relied upon to secure open space or limit bulk, Cooper teaches us they may now be dismissed as legally irrelevant. Valuers and lenders may begin to follow suit.
- Drafting needs care. That boilerplate “together with the benefit of all rights…” clause? It’s not a guarantee. Not anymore.
- No retroactive absolution. s.203 cannot cleanse a prior breach. Arbor remained vulnerable precisely because the statutory override arrived too late. This means developers—and their advisers—must get the timing right. If a right of light has already been infringed, only a negotiated release (or a large enough cheque) will do.
This isn’t just a litigation story—it’s a conveyancing one too. The skyline may be rising, but so too are your professional duties.
CLOSING ARGUMENT: THE RIGHT TO LIGHT, REWIRED
What Cooper has done is quietly seismic. It confirms that:
- Rights of light exist only so far as they are enforceable.
- If statute removes the sword, the shield goes too.
- The Waldram method remains the legal lens through which to assess interference.
- And crucially, that injunctions remain discretionary, fact-sensitive, and elusive once concrete has set and tenants have moved in.
As the judge observed, echoing Colls and confirming the Hound’s own view:
“The focus… is not on what light has been taken away… but on what light remains.”
And if that remaining light cannot be protected, it might as well be the fading gleam of a gas lamp on a soot-blackened sill.
London builds upwards. The law—still—looks sideways.
And the Hound, prowling among the ruins of antique easements and statutory ambition, tips his hat to a judgment that brings clarity to a doctrine mired in metaphor.
Call it progress. Call it precedent. But don’t, whatever you do, call it sunlight.
Contact our Residential Property team
For more information about Bishop & Sewell’s residential property services please contact Charlie Davidson Senior Associate in the firm’s Residential Property team: cdavidson@bishopandsewell.co.uk or follow Charlie on LinkedIn.
The above is accurate as at 28 May 2025. The information above may be subject to change.
The content of this note should not be considered legal advice and each matter should be considered on a case-by-case basis.
