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counterpart, private nuisance is not primarily concerned with promoting the wider interests of the community (cf. Miller v. Jackson, discussed below) but in balancing the rights of adjoining occupiers of land (although it might plausibly be argued that, in any society which recognises private rights in land, these two aims are not as dissimilar as they might at first appear). As Lord Wright noted in SedleighDenfield v. O’Callahan [1940] AC 880 at 903: ‘A balance has to be maintained between the right of the occupier to do what he likes with his own and the right of the neighbour not to be interfered with’, for otherwise modern life would be impossible. If we simply banned all interference with neighbouring land, there would be little one could do with your own lest some extraneous noise or smell happened to waft from it. Similarly, to allow unlimited interference with neighbouring land would give you the right to make surrounding land effectively unusable because of the unlimited amount of disruption you would be at liberty to inflict. Balancing the rights of adjoining occupiers of land is capable of promoting the interests of the wider community by allowing all land within that society to be used effectively. It is then a matter of debate as to how this is to be achieved and as to which criteria are to be used in judging what is an effective use of the land, as we see below.

6.4.1.2.The requirements of private nuisance

Private nuisance has been described as ‘unlawful interference with a person’s use or enjoyment of land, or some right over or in connection with it’ (Scott LJ in Read v. Lyons & Co. Ltd [1945] KB 216 at 236). The interference normally comprises a continuous or recurrent activity or condition which may take one of three forms (cf. Gearty, ‘The Place of Private Nuisance in a Modern Law of Torts’). You may interfere with your neighbour’s land by causing or permitting something to encroach onto his land from your own, such as overhanging branches, tree roots or children repeatedly trespassing. Direct physical injury to the neighbouring land may also amount to a nuisance where it is continuous or repeated, for example when building works on your land cause subsidence to neighbouring properties or where the windows and tiles of a house are repeatedly broken by cricket balls emanating from the village cricket green. Finally, nuisance will also arise as a result of interference with the use or enjoyment of land (often referred to as the amenity of land), for example when noise or smoke emanating from a factory continuously or repeatedly wafts over a neighbouring property. This final variety of nuisance has been described recently by Lord Goff in Hunter v. Canary Wharf [1997] AC 655 at 692, as the ‘typical’ form and will be the one on which we concentrate below.

The point to note at the outset is that, while interference with land might constitute a nuisance, it does not in fact follow from this that an actionable nuisance exists in law. As we stated in the previous section, private nuisance is concerned with balancing the rights of adjoining occupiers of land, and, in attempting to achieve such equilibrium, the common law’s primary guide is a test of reasonableness. The question to be determined is whether or not the