Easements
An easement is a right which a person has over land owned by someone else. Easements are normally attached to the land rather than to a person and can be considered to last in perpetuity.
Examples of easements include:
- Rights of way.
- Right to light.
- The right for underground services to pass beneath the land of a neighbouring property.
- Right of support.
- The right to draw water.
An easement can be created by:
- Express grant, for example, it may be set out in a conveyance deed or a transfer deed.
- Necessity, for example, if there is only one means of access between a site and a public highway.
- By prescription, i.e. the act is repeated for a period of at least twenty years.
Easements can be extinguished in several ways:
- Agreement between the parties in the form of a deed.
- By implied release, for example it has not been used for a long period of time.
- Where the character of the dominant land has changed.
- By limitation of time, if a limitation was agreed.
- By a change in law.
Easements differ from wayleaves, which are temporary agreements typically used by utilities companies to allow them to install and maintain equipment on privately-owned land in return for payment to the landowner and occupier.
[edit] Related articles on Designing Buildings Wiki
- Building survey.
- Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000.
- Deed of easement.
- Dominant estate.
- Due diligence.
- Encumbrances.
- Land register.
- Lawyer.
- Party wall act.
- Permissive path.
- Property rights.
- Restrictive covenants.
- Right to light.
- Right of support.
- Rights of way.
- Rights over land.
- Right to a view.
- Right to access land.
- Servient estate.
- Tree rights.
- Trespass.
- Wayleave.
[edit] External references
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