Once a highway, always a highway?

Once a highway, always a highway…
…. or so the legal maxim goes. However, Lady Justice Arden in the Court of Appeal in the recent case of R (on the application of Wayne Smith) v Land Registry and Cambridgeshire County Council (2010) was at pains to point out that there are a number of ways in which a highway can indeed cease to be a highway; it could be destroyed (“for example if a cliff path fell into the sea”), diverted, stopped up or extinguished under certain statutes. However, these are limited and certainly acquiring title by adverse possession, the court decided, is not one of them.

This briefing looks at the case in further detail.