UK Construction and Law

Planning permission and listed building consent for a barn conversion count for nothing against a single dwellinghouse covenant

By Staff Writer  |  21 August 2026

The Upper Tribunal has refused an application under section 84 of the Law of Property Act 1925 to modify a 1996 covenant restricting a property to use as one private dwellinghouse. The owner had planning permission and listed building consent to convert a garage and barn in the curtilage into a separate dwelling. The tribunal held the covenant secured practical benefits of substantial advantage to the three neighbouring owners, which removed its jurisdiction to modify at all.

John Bladon v Polls Yard M.C. Limited and others [2026] UKUT 0298 (LC) was decided by His Honour Judge William Hanbury and Mrs Diane Martin MRICS FAAV on 11 August 2026, after a site inspection on 7 July and a two day hearing. The property is 4 Polls Yard at Castor in Cambridgeshire, one of four houses arranged around a common courtyard on the site of a former farmyard.

Two covenants, one of them fatal

The covenants were imposed by a transfer dated 9 February 1996. The first, described in the decision as the consent covenant, prevents alteration of the external plan or elevation of any building, or the erection of any building, without the sellers' written consent. The second, the user covenant, is in these terms: not to use the property at any time for any purpose other than that of a single private dwellinghouse.

On 8 January 2024 the owner obtained planning consent to convert the garage and barn within the curtilage into a separate dwelling, together with listed building consent. The user covenant prevented him from implementing either. On 16 September 2025 he applied to the tribunal to modify it so as to permit implementation, relying on grounds (aa) and (c) of section 84(1).

The benefit of the covenants belongs to the owners of the other three houses and to the management company through which the four properties are run. All of them objected. The application was determined without expert evidence.

What counted as a practical benefit

Ground (aa) allows modification where the covenant impedes a reasonable use of the land and, in impeding it, does not secure practical benefits of substantial advantage to those entitled to it. The objectors did not run a case about light, outlook or noise. Their case was structural: the management company is the mechanism by which four owners share the cost and management of the courtyard, and reconfiguring it for five properties would require the agreement of every owner and probably the consent of the lenders holding charges over two of the houses.

The applicant answered that the tribunal could impose additional covenants and conditions under section 84(1C), and that agreement could be reached with a mediator. The tribunal did not accept it. Evidence from the company secretary was that an extraordinary general meeting in November 2025 had considered asking each household for £1,000 towards the company's legal costs, that the applicant objected to funding an objection to his own application, and that the proposal went no further, with the objectors funding their objection themselves. Against that, the tribunal held the applicant unduly optimistic that mediation would produce agreement, and treated the avoidance of such a negotiation as a further practical benefit of the covenant.

We determine, based on our observations during the inspection and the evidence we heard, that the practical benefits secured by the user covenant are of substantial advantage to the objectors and we therefore have no jurisdiction to discharge or modify it under either ground (aa) or ground (c).

His Honour Judge William Hanbury and Mrs Diane Martin MRICS FAAV, Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber)

Ground (c), that modification would injure nobody entitled to the benefit, fell away once practical benefits were found. The tribunal made no finding on the consent covenant, because no application had been made to modify it, but invited the parties to make submissions within one month if they could agree wording for a modification by consent. Either party may seek permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal on a point of law.

The order in which to spend the money

The sequence here is the ordinary one and it is the wrong way round. Planning permission and listed building consent were obtained first, at cost, and the private law obstacle was addressed nineteen months later, by which time the neighbours had organised, taken advice and paid for it themselves.

A title check before an application would have found a covenant that says what it means in a single line. Section 84 is not a route around it: once the benefit is shown to be of substantial advantage, the tribunal has no power to help, however reasonable the proposed use and however clean the planning position.