Right of Way in UK Law

The grantee of the right could only object to such activities of the owner of the land, including retention of obstruction, as substantially interfered with the use of the land in such exercise of the defined right as for the time being is reasonably required.

Although the right is granted "at all times and for all purposes", nevertheless it is not a sole right. It is a right "in common with all other persons having the like right". It must not be used so as to interfere unreasonably with the use by those other persons, that is with their use of it as they do now, or as they may do lawfully in the future. The only way in which the rights of all can be reconciled is by holding that none of them must use the way excessively.

It is to be noted that a prescriptive right arises where there has been user as of right in which the servient owner has, with the requisite degree of knowledge (which is not an issue in the present case), acquiesced. Therefore mere acquiescence in or tolerance of the user by the servient owner cannot prevent the user being user as of right for purposes of prescription.

The unifying element in these three vitiating circumstances was that each constituted a reason why it would not have been reasonable to expect the owner to resist the exercise of the right–in the first case, because rights should not be acquired by the use of force, in the second, because the owner would not have known of the user and in the third, because he had consented to the user, but for a limited period.

In the normal case, of course, outward appearance and inward belief will coincide. A person who believes he has the right to use a footpath will use it in the way in which a person having such a right would use it. But user which is apparently as of right cannot be discounted merely because, as will often be the case, many of the users over a long period were subjectively indifferent as to whether a right existed, or even had private knowledge that it did not.

A second necessary qualification to the proposition afore-stated would be that the grant of a right that required some positive action to be undertaken by the owner of the servient land in order to enable the right to be enjoyed by the grantee could not, in my opinion, be a servitude. The right to use the pool would be no more than an in personam contractual right at best.

If there be a radical change in the character of the dominant tenement, then the prescriptive right will not extend to it in that condition. The obvious example is a change of a small doling house to a large hotel, but there has been no change of that character according to the facts found in this case.