“Petts Wood East … was developed as a garden suburb in the late 1920s and early 1930s. … The scheme of development of Petts Wood East is set out in A History of Pets Wood by Peter Waymark …, which describes how Basil Scruby oversaw the development of a garden suburb for London commuters. [He] Obtained an option over the relevant land, drew up a plan for the new garden suburb, divided the building land up into lots, organised an initial auction of building lots and then sold further lots as the development progressed.”
“2. The characteristics of such a scheme are that: i) It applies to a defined area. ii) Owners of properties within that area have purchased their properties from a common owner. iii) Each of the properties is burdened by covenants which were intended to be mutually enforceable as between the several owners. iv) The limits of that defined area are known to each of the purchasers. v) The common owner is himself bound by the scheme, which crystallises on the occasion of the first sale of a plot within the defined area, with the consequence that he is not entitled to dispose of plots within that area otherwise than on the terms of the scheme. vi) The effect of the scheme will bind future purchasers of land falling within the area, potentially for ever.”
“a defined area within which the scheme is operative. Reciprocity is the foundation of the idea of a scheme. A purchaser of one parcel cannot be subject to an implied obligation to purchasers of an undefined and unknown area. He must know the extent of his burden and the extent of his benefit. Not only must the area be defined but the obligations to be imposed within that area must be defined. These obligations need not be identical. For example, there may be houses of a certain value in one part and houses of a different value in another part. A building scheme is not created by the mere fact that the owner of an estate sells it in lots and takes varying covenants from various purchasers. There must be notice to the various purchasers of what I may venture to call the local law imposed by the vendor upon a definite area.”
“31. If the conveyance expressly refers to a plan, but the plan has been lost, the court may well infer that the lost plan sufficiently identified the land to which the scheme of mutual covenants applied… 32. The fact that there is no map or plan in the conveyance itself of the area to be affected is not necessarily fatal to the existence of a scheme of mutual covenants if the verbal description of the area to which it applies can be identified by extrinsic evidence. But this is no more than a reflection of the ordinary rules of evidence applicable to conveyances.”
“25. One would have thought, a priori, that in the case of a scheme of mutual covenants designed to last potentially for ever, that that intention would be readily ascertainable without having to undertake laborious research in dusty archives searching for ephemera more than a century old. In almost all the cases to which we were referred where a scheme of mutual covenants was found to exist, the area of land to which the scheme applied was ascertainable from the terms of the conveyance or other transactional documents in question. Conversely where the conveyance or other transactional documents gave no indication of the land to which the scheme applied, no scheme was found.”
“it must be proved… (3) that these restrictions were intended by the common vendor to be and were for the benefit of all the lots intended to be sold, whether or not they were also intended to be and were for the benefit of other land retained bythe vendor; and (4) that both the plaintiff and the defendants, or their predecessors in title, purchased their lots from the common vendor upon the footing that the restrictions subject to which the purchases were made were to enure for the benefit of the other lots included in the general scheme, whether or not they were also to enure for the benefit of other lands retained by the vendors.”
“No act or things shall be done or be permitted to be done on the property hereby assured or in or upon any building erected thereon which may be or grow to be an annoyance nuisance damage or disturbance to the Vendors or to the owner or tenant of any other plot or part of the Estate.”
“In the foregoing stipulations and restriction … “the Vendors” wherever this context so admits or requires means and includes the Vendors their successors and assigns the Owner or Owners for the time being of the unsold portion of the property of the Vendors.”
“42. In the light of these considerations I would provisionally conclude that no scheme has been established. What, then, of the extrinsic evidence? I do not think that we were shown any case which binds us to hold that the existence of a scheme can be established purely on the basis of extrinsic evidence, now over a century old. That would, in my judgment, be a very unsatisfactory state of affairs given that the existence of enforceable restrictive covenants is potentially a perpetual interference with the right of successive property owners to do as they please with their own property. Assuming, however, that the existence of a scheme can be proved by such evidence alone it would, in my judgment, require cogent evidence to do so.”
“The Estate has been laid out for building in accordance with a general scheme applicable to the whole Estate shown on the plan as to such parts thereof as are already lotted as lotted and as to the other parts thereof as the Vendors shall lot them and is offered for sale as a building estate subject to and with the benefit of the foregoing stipulations and restrictions.”
“The Purchaser of each lot, plot or part of the Estate shall be bound to observe and perform for the benefit and protection of each of the other lots, plots or parts of the Estate … such of the stipulations and restrictions as are applicable to the lot, plot or part purchased. And the Conveyance of each lot, plot or part shall contain separate covenants by the Purchaser and the Vendor and every other Purchaser whose lot shall have been previously conveyed to observe and perform the said stipulations and restrictions …”