Supreme Court clarifies rules on boundary disputes

Mr Brown, the respondent, is the registered owner of a plot of land in Consett, County Durham, purchased in 2002. The appellants, Mr. and Mrs. Ridley, own a neighbouring plot, acquired in 2004. A boundary dispute arose when it was discovered that a fence and hedge, believed to mark the boundary, actually enclosed part of Mr. Brown's land. The Ridleys had used this disputed land as part of their garden and later for constructing a new house.

In 2019, the Ridleys applied to the Land Registry to be registered as the owners of the disputed land, claiming adverse possession. The First-Tier Tribunal sided with the Ridleys, but Mr. Brown successfully appealed to the Upper Tribunal. The Ridleys then took the case to the Supreme Court via the 'leapfrog' procedure. 

Supreme Court Decision

The central issue was whether the ten years of reasonable belief of ownership under paragraph 5(4)(c) of Schedule 6 to the Land Registration Act 2002 had to be the ten years prior to the date of the application, or whether it could be any ten years within the period of adverse possession. That mattered, because the First-Tier Tribunal had found that the Ridleys had only reasonably believed that they owned the disputed land until around February 2018, roughly 21 months before they made their application. The Supreme Court ruled in favour of the Ridleys and held that paragraph 5(4)(c) of Schedule 6 to the LRA meant that any ten-year period of reasonable belief was sufficient. 

The relevant provision of paragraph 5(4) of Schedule 6 that this case relates to is below and we have italicised the words in dispute:

(c) for at least ten years of the period of adverse possession ending on the date of the application, the applicant (or any predecessor in title) reasonably believed that the land to which the application relates belonged to him. 

Implications

This ruling provides clarity on the interpretation of the Land Registration Act 2002, particularly regarding the requirements for adverse possession claims. In almost every case a party seeking to rely on adverse possession will have been disabused of that belief some time before making the application and this judgment by the Supreme Court has now restored the ability for them to rely on this condition. The Court made the point that the burden of proof would be on the person claiming adverse possession and so any evidential issues in dealing with historically remote periods of reasonable belief (or otherwise) those would fall on them.