• Residents of opulent London apartments win bid for access to Tate Modern viewing platform.
• Residents say they feel like they are living in a “zoo”.
• While hundreds of thousands of people can see them.

Owners of four opulent London apartments that look out onto the Tate Modern have won a privacy bid for access to the gallery’s observation platform.

The “hundreds of thousands of people” who were peering into the homes of the Neo Bankside residents prompted legal action.

The Court of Appeal rejected their suit in February 2020 and advised them to “lower their solar shutters.”

Nevertheless, the ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court on Wednesday at a hearing in December 2021.

The five residents had requested an injunction directing the gallery to “cordon off” or “erect screening” to prevent people from viewing their apartments.

They appealed their case to the UK‘s highest court after losing it in the High Court and Court of Appeal.

In his assessment, Lord Leggatt stated that the inhabitants felt like they were “on exhibit in a zoo” as a result of the viewing gallery, which is currently shuttered.

He added it was “not difficult to imagine how oppressive living in such circumstances would feel for any ordinary person”.

He also found the platform was not a “normal” use of the museum’s land and “inviting members of the public to look out from a viewing gallery is manifestly a very particular and exceptional use of land”.

“It cannot even be said to be a necessary or ordinary incident of operating an art museum,” he said.

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