Real property, real impact: the legacy of Regency Villas

Article by Emer Murphy and Andreas Giannakopoulos, 21st February 2026

This article was first published by Estates Gazette here.

In Regency Villas Title Ltd v Diamond Resorts (Europe) Ltd [2018] UKSC 57; [2019] EGLR 1, the Supreme Court held by a majority that the grant of recreational and sporting right over land can take effect as a valid easement in English law. The case concerned Broome Park, a country house estate converted into a leisure complex with timeshare apartments and various sporting and recreational facilities. In 1981, a villa on the estate was sold to a company to be converted into more timeshare apartments, with the freehold to be held by a nominee company for the future timeshare owners of the villa.

The conveyance included the grant of the right for the transferee and the occupiers of the villa to use “the swimming pool, golf course, squash courts, tennis courts, the ground and basement floor of the Broome Park Mansion House, gardens and any other sporting or recreational facilities… on the Transferor’s adjoining estate”.

At the time, it was anticipated that the timeshare owners would have the free use of the facilities, with maintenance costs to be met by paying members of the public. This proved to be overly optimistic. The defendants acquired the leisure complex and, shortly after, started charging the timeshare owners for the use of the facilities. The timeshare owners and the nominee company brought proceedings seeking a declaration that they had the benefit of an easement entitling them to the free use of all the sporting or recreational facilities within the leisure complex, as well as an injunction and the return of sums paid. The claim succeeded at first instance and on appeal.

The Supreme Court view

Lord Briggs (giving the Supreme Court’s majority judgment) considered it “plain beyond a doubt” that the right granted accommodated the dominant land since it allowed access to  recreational and sporting activities from the timeshare units, which were typically occupied as holiday homes by persons seeking leisure.

This conclusion was said to find support in the near universal acceptance of the benefits of recreational and sporting activities in modern times. Further, in Lord Briggs’ view, a meaningful use of the right remained possible even if the defendants ceased to maintain the facilities – consistently with the principle that an easement cannot generally require more than passivity by the servient owner; the timeshare owners could refill the swimming pool, mow the greens of the 18-hole golf course and also bring their lighting generator to the squash courts.

The majority was also satisfied that the timeshare owners’ “stepin” rights to manage and maintain the facilities – arising as an incident of the easement – were not so extensive as to oust the servient owner, given that they were, by definition, limited to reasonable access. In a strong dissent, Lord Carnwath described the new easement as conferring “permanent membership of a country club” and considered the right granted could not realistically be enjoyed without either active involvement by the defendants or the timeshare owners taking over the management of the leisure complex.

The impact

Although Regency Villas is often described as having created a new species of easement, this is something of an overstatement. The decision confirmed the more capacious understanding of the requirement of accommodation which had developed since the seminal case of Re Ellenborough Park [1956] Ch 131, firmly embedding within this notion the use of facilities on neighbouring land for recreational and sporting activities. Lord Briggs recently had occasion to reaffirm this in Cayman Shores Development Ltd v Proprietors of Strata Plan No. 79 (Lion’s Court) [2025] UKPC 27, a case about rights granted to condominium occupiers to use a golf course, beach club and tennis courts in a Cayman hotel resort.

Where Regency Villas arguably broke new ground is in its analysis of the extent to which recreational and sporting rights can be enjoyed without active
involvement by the servient owner. The Supreme Court treated the question as one of “meaningful” or “worthwhile” use; so long as some meaningful use of the right granted could be made without the management and maintenance of the servient owner, then the “mere passivity” principle was not offended and the right could take effect as an easement. However, Lord Briggs continued: “It is not difficult to imagine recreational facilities which do depend upon the active and continuous management and operation by the servient owner, which no exercise of step-in rights by the dominant owners would make useable, even for a short period. Free rides on a miniature steam railway, a covered ski slope with artificial snow, or adventure rides in a theme park are examples which would probably lie on the wrong side of the line, so as to be incapable of forming the subject matter of an easement. But the precise dividing line in any particular case will be a question of fact.”

That precise dividing line may well be difficult to apply. Though the point of principle is expressed easily enough (can the dominant owner make some meaningful use of the rights, even if the servient owner does nothing?), the examples given by the court as falling on either side of the line are not particularly illuminating and appear to set the bar for meaningful use very low. In particular, the notion that an indoor swimming pool requires only to be “kept full of water” for it to be safely used seems, in this day and age, a surprising conclusion.

This dividing line was put to the test in Cayman Shores. The Privy Council addressed some thorny issues arising out of the land registration system in Cayman, but the courts below had to grapple with the more fundamental question of whether the dominant owners could really make any meaningful use of (in particular) he right to play golf, without active management and maintenance by the servient owners of the golf course. The evidence at first instance was that the aggressive climate in the Caribbean led to an expensive input of resources by the servient owners to maintain the golf course, including half a million dollars annually on watering alone. Nonetheless, Segal J at first instance and the Cayman Islands Court of Appeal agreed that some meaningful use of the golf course would still be possible even if the servient owners were to remain entirely passive.

An essential element in the reasoning was the extent of the step-in rights that could be exercised by the dominant owners; Segal J concluded that the lot owners would “be able to develop a plan for sufficient maintenance to meet their needs and allow them to play golf in conditions which are no doubt much below an independently run championship course but which are acceptable and worthwhile to them”. The distance travelled from the notion of the owner of a right of way entering the servient land to do “necessary work in a reasonable manner” (Carter v Cole [2006] EWCA Civ 398) is notable.

Questions remain

The limits of this expanded notion of step-in rights have yet to be fully explored. The potential for disputes to arise when the dominant owner enters land that they do not own to maintain recreational services that the servient owner may no longer want to offer is obvious, all the more so as the dominant and servient lands are passed down to successors in title.

Further, stalemates could arise if the servient owner stops maintaining the facilities and the dominant owner is unable or unwilling to spend the money necessary to enable a meaningful use of them, which would sterilise the land contrary to the expressed purpose of the “mere passivity” requirement in Regency Villas.

Given that (unlike restrictive covenants), the courts have no power under section 84 of the Law of Property Act 1925 to release or modify easements unreasonably burdening land, the true legacy of Regency Villas may end up being that more dominant owners than before benefit from property law’s consolation prize: their palms being crossed with silver in exchange for the release of their otherwise permanent property rights.