ABSTRACT
The Lands Tribunal had shown a reluctance to modify restrictive covenants which still retained an element of value to the beneficiary but which impeded some reasonable user of the land for public or private purposes and where the award of compensation would have been an adequate recompense. By 1969 development planning and planning control had become an accepted way of life. The Law of Property Act, 1969 addressed both of the issues of ‘compensation’ and ‘planning’. By the introduction of an alien form of development it must be a debatable point as to whether the ‘wider environmental character’ of the estate was not being sacrificed in the interests of the ‘narrower environmental landscape’ of the immediate arboreal locality. Decisions of the Lands Tribunal to grant or refuse applications for the modification or discharge of restrictive covenants are, as the Courts and the Lands Tribunal have made clear, discretionary.
