The Law Commission’s extensive proposals in respect of easements, covenants and profits, which included a Draft Bill, have already been the subject of comment in this Journal. It remains uncertain whether all, or any, of those proposals will reach the statute book, but that does not reflect at all on the quality of the work. Rather, it reflects the general apathy towards technical law reform in these times of economic difficulty and the political skulduggery that inevitably surrounds a Coalition Government. There have been few adverse comments on the Report, even though the section on covenants is controversial, and, generally speaking, the prevailing mood seems to be that reform is overdue and that the Commission’s proposals are a sound start. However, in that Report, the Commission also flagged that there were particular and additional problems with rights to light. As is well known, these are so-called negative easements in that they prevent the servient landowner from doing something on his or her own land, rather than permitting the dominant owner from acting on the servient land. As such, they are closely related to restrictive covenants and have the potential to paralyse the development of land, at least while the dominant owner decides whether to pursue injunctive relief or to extract a large sum in compensation for surrendering the easement. However, unlike covenants which necessarily spring from a contractual bargain, even if made some time ago, easements of light can be expressly or impliedly created. Of course, in one sense, implied grant (and reservation where it is possible) can be said to arise from a consensual transaction, but there are few who doubt that the four “methods” of implied creation can be a trap for the unwary. Further, prescription is certainly not based on a consensual transaction, whatever the theory might be, and so it is that a dominant owner can acquire a prescriptive right to light by doing nothing at all, save simply enjoying the light. Thus, whereas restrictive covenants also control land use and can hinder development, they cannot arise “accidentally” and the Lands Chamber of the Upper Tribunal has a well known jurisdiction to modify or discharge restrictive covenants if this is, broadly speaking, in the public interest. This places rights to light in a unique position and the Law Commission recognized this in its 2011 Report by indicating that it would turn again to the subject.