Caroline Preist

Caroline has more than 30 years’ experience in resolving complex issues spanning all aspects of property ownership, occupation, and development.

With particular expertise in easements (including rights of way, drainage, and water flow), restrictive covenants, and boundary disputes, Caroline works closely with landowners and occupiers to navigate disputes and potential issues relating to land. She also advises property owners and surveyors on party wall matters, acts for landlords and tenants in contested commercial lease renewals and terminations, forfeitures for non-payment of rent, breaches of lease, service charges, and rent collections, and supports developers to resolve site set-up and pre-acquisition issues.

Examples of Caroline’s work include:

• Supporting a client to defend and settle a claim for close to £1 million arising out of a wrongful forfeiture.
• Acting for a London pub chain in obtaining compensation after it acquired a pub where the seller had failed to disclose that it had received various local authority notices which had the effect of making the pub subject to erosion and potentially valueless.
• Acting for landowner who had moved the entry point to their property from a right of way in obtaining an injunction and declarations permitting the change of access point in a case which made new law in the Court of Appeal.
• Acting for owner of a garden centre in long-running boundary dispute, leading to a settlement that protected future development and drainage.
• Advising a landowner in relation to poorly-worded overage agreement, allowing the site to be freed from subsequent development, and facilitating a claim for compensation being made against former solicitors.
• Acting for the landlord of a pub in instigating contested lease renewal proceedings, settling on terms which allowed the client to achieve their aim of unlocking the development potential of its adjoining site.