Cyprus law gives a neighbour dispute a precise frame: private nuisance under section 46 of the Civil Wrongs Law, Cap. 148, needs habitual interference with the reasonable use and enjoyment of your property, judged by the area's own character. It is no defence that the nuisance was there before you arrived. Light has its own rule after fifteen years. And where the trouble is a building site, the permit legislation itself gives the person damaged a right of action.
The complaints arrive in ordinary words: the workshop that runs its compressor into the night, the kitchen extract that discharges over a bedroom window, the yard that floods a neighbour's plot every winter, the building site that has made a house unusable. The law that answers them is older and more exact than most people expect, and it sits in five short sections of the Civil Wrongs Law, Cap. 148.
This guide sets out what each section actually requires, because the requirements decide which complaints are claims and which are only grievances.
Private nuisance: habitual interference, measured locally
Under section 46, private nuisance consists in a person conducting themselves, carrying on their business, or using immovable property they own or occupy, in a way that habitually interferes with the reasonable use and enjoyment of another person's immovable property, having regard to the situation and nature of that property.
Each phrase carries weight. Habitually: an isolated party, one weekend of works, a single escape of water, sits awkwardly in the definition; a pattern fits it. Having regard to the situation and nature: the same noise reads differently beside an industrial estate and in a residential cul-de-sac, so the measure is the character of the place, not the sensitivity of the complainant. And the interference must be with the use and enjoyment of immovable property: the claim belongs to the person whose land or home is affected.
The first proviso to section 46 adds the practical condition: no damages without damage. A diary of what happened and when, measurements where the interference can be measured, and evidence of what it has cost, in repairs, in lost lettings, in medical consequences, is what converts irritation into a case.
Section 48 removes the argument every defendant reaches for first: it is not a defence that the nuisance existed before the claimant acquired the property. Buying next to the noisy workshop does not licence the workshop.
The defences that do exist are narrower. Under section 47 it is a defence that the act was done under a covenant or contract binding the claimant and operating for the defendant's benefit: the arrangement the parties themselves made can answer the complaint. And under section 49 the nuisance provisions of the Municipalities Law are unaffected, so the municipal route and the civil claim run on separate tracks.
Public nuisance: the special damage gate
Section 45 defines public nuisance: an unlawful act, or an omission to perform a legal obligation, endangering the life, safety, health, property or comfort of the public, or obstructing the public in the exercise of a common right. The blocked road, the dangerous state of a public place, the discharge that affects a neighbourhood rather than a neighbour.
Its proviso is the part that matters to a private claimant: no action lies except by the Attorney General for a prohibitory order, or by a person who suffered special damage. A member of the public inconvenienced like everyone else has no civil claim; the shop whose entrance the obstruction blocks, the owner whose access floods, has. Identifying the special damage, particular to you and beyond the general inconvenience, is the first task in these cases.
Light: fifteen years, then a right
Interference with light is expressly carved out of section 46 and given its own section. Under section 50, it is a civil wrong to obstruct the enjoyment of a reasonable proportion of light, regard being had to the property's situation and nature, where the owner or occupier, or their predecessors in title, enjoyed that light uninterruptedly for not less than fifteen years before the obstruction, otherwise than under a covenant or contract.
The section rewards records: when the windows were formed, how long the building has stood, what exactly the new structure blocks. It protects a reasonable proportion of light, not a view, and the distinction decides most of these complaints at the first meeting.
The building site next door
Where the interference comes from construction, two further instruments join section 46. The works themselves are regulated by the Streets and Buildings Regulation Law, Cap. 96: whether a permit exists, and whether the works comply with it, is a fact obtainable early, and under section 29 of that Law a breach of an obligation it imposes is a civil wrong giving a right of action to the person damaged, which no contract term or notice can exclude. A neighbour damaged by works carried out without or against a permit is not confined to nuisance.
And where the damage is continuing, the remedy that matters is speed. Under section 32 of the Courts of Justice Law 14/1960, the court can grant an interlocutory injunction where there is a serious question to be tried, a probability of entitlement, and a risk that complete justice could not be done later without it. Cracks propagating from adjacent excavation are the textbook case for asking now rather than at trial.
In a jointly owned building the same complaints wear different clothes: the noise is above the ceiling and the leak is in the common pipework. There the management committee holds the duty to keep the common property in good condition and can sue and be sued, and the firm's guide to common expenses and communal areas covers that regime.
What a claim can achieve
Three things, separately or together: an order that the interference stop, damages for the loss actually suffered and proved, and, where the situation is deteriorating, interim protection while the case runs. Which of the three leads depends on the facts: against a finished building, damages; against a use that continues nightly, the order is the point of the exercise.
What a claim cannot do is re-zone the neighbourhood. Section 46's own measure, the situation and nature of the property, protects ordinary local activity as much as it protects the complainant, and an honest first assessment says on which side of that line a complaint falls.
What to send us
The diary, with dates and times; photographs or recordings where they exist; any measurement, of noise, of vibration, of flooding levels; the correspondence already exchanged, because what each side wrote at the time is evidence; and for construction cases, anything known about the permit position. Send the title deed or lease too: the claim belongs to the person whose use and enjoyment is interfered with.
Questions we are asked
The noise was here before I bought the house. Do I have no claim?
Not so. Section 48 of Cap. 148 provides expressly that it is no defence that the nuisance existed before the claimant acquired ownership or possession of the affected property. What the history affects is evidence, not entitlement: the character of the area, which section 46 makes part of the measure, is assessed as it is.
How often does something have to happen before it is a nuisance?
Section 46 speaks of habitual interference, so a pattern is what the definition wants: nightly noise, a discharge every time it rains, a use repeated week after week. A single event is not hopeless, but it usually needs a different legal home, negligence for the escape that caused damage, or the Cap. 96 route for unlawful works. Bring the diary and we will say which frame fits.
Can I claim for a blocked view?
The Civil Wrongs Law protects light, not prospect. Under section 50 the right is to a reasonable proportion of light after fifteen years' uninterrupted enjoyment, judged by the property's situation and nature. A structure that darkens habitable rooms raises a real question; one that interrupts the sea view does not, under this section. Planning objections are a separate route with their own timetable.
The site next door has cracked my walls. Do I wait for the case to finish?
No. Where damage is continuing, an interlocutory injunction under section 32 of the Courts of Justice Law 14/1960 can be sought at the start, on the tests the section sets: a serious question, a probability of entitlement, and the risk that later justice would be incomplete. Photograph the damage now, date the photographs, and ask about the permit position early: under section 29 of Cap. 96 a breach of that Law is itself actionable by the person damaged.
Everyone on the street is affected, not just me. Does that help or hurt?
It changes the frame. Interference with the public at large is public nuisance under section 45, and a private claimant then needs special damage, loss particular to them beyond the general inconvenience. Interference with your property specifically is private nuisance under section 46, whoever else suffers too. Many situations support both, and the pleading chooses deliberately.
Is a letter worth sending before suing?
Almost always. A letter that records the interference, asks for it to stop, and sets a reasonable period does three jobs: it sometimes ends the matter, it starts the record that habitual interference continued after notice, and it reads well in the costs argument later. What it should not do is threaten more than you are prepared to pursue. The firm's guide to the letter before action covers the anatomy.
Related reading
This work sits within our litigation practice. The letter that opens a dispute properly is in the letter before action, the jointly owned building's own regime is in common expenses and communal areas, and boundary and encroachment questions are in Land Registry errors and boundary disputes.
This article is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Laws and their application can change, and individual circumstances differ. For advice on your own matter, contact Klitos Platis at klitos@kleanthousplatis.com or telephone +357 22 680 330.
Klitos Platis
Advocate, Partner
Kleanthous & Platis LLC, Nicosia · Published 22 August 2026
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