[2025] UKUT 242 (LC)

It was common ground that the majority of the works – extending the ground floor and raising the roof – are caught by the restriction. Whether ‘the external … elevation of the dwellinghouse shall not be altered or permitted or suffered to be altered’ includes the alterations to the windows or doors was in issue, Mr Brown submitting that the alterations are plainly caught by the restriction, Mr Moys arguing that the meaning is much looser than that, and refers to meaningful alterations to the building when viewed as an elevation.

In Triplerose Limited v Patel [2018] UKUT 0374 (LC), the Tribunal (Martin Rodger QC, Deputy Chamber President) was satisfied that a leasehold covenant which prevented a tenant from making ‘any alteration in the elevation’ of a flat had been breached by the tenant replacing a window with a door of the same dimensions. The Tribunal found that the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) had read too much into a decision in Joseph v London County Council (1914) 111 LT 276. The Deputy Chamber President commented [15]:

“It is not necessary to refer to a specialist legal dictionary or to the observations of an Edwardian judge to identify the natural and ordinary meaning of the word “elevation”. It is not a term of art, and unless it is being used in some special or technical sense it can be understood by anyone familiar with ordinary usage. The word has a number of meanings in different contexts. In architecture or surveying it means a drawing of a building on a vertical plane, as opposed to a ground plan; by extension it means not simply a drawing of the vertical plane but the vertical plane or exterior of the building itself.”

In my judgment the alterations which the applicants wish to make, and have made, to door and window openings constitute an alteration to elevations, and are therefore works which are prevented by the restrictions.