The Upper Tribunal (UT) has rejected a landowner’s appeal against the dismissal of his application for the determination of a boundary between a strip of land he owned and the garden of a neighbouring house.
He had originally owned a large house with extensive grounds. When he sold the house, he retained a field in a corner of the grounds, which had been zoned for residential development, as well as the strip of land, which led to the field. He applied to the Land Registry to determine the boundary between the strip and the neighbour’s garden. The owner of the neighbouring house objected to the application, which was referred to the First-tier Tribunal (FTT) for determination. The substance of the dispute was whether the eastern boundary of the strip was immediately to the west of where a row of pine trees had once stood or further to the east. If the former, the strip might not be wide enough to accommodate development.
In 1971, the then owners of the houses had made an agreement that the land where the pine trees stood belonged to the neighbouring property. The FTT found that the agreement’s failure comply with formalities for the transfer of land did not render it ineffective, as it had not been intended to transfer land but rather recorded an agreement about the true position of the boundary. Nor did the fact that it had not been executed by the proprietor of the neighbouring house but by her husband prevent it from being binding.
While the conclusion that the agreement was binding was sufficient to dismiss the application, the FTT also decided that the boundary on the original 1949 conveyance depicted the pine trees. Even if those findings were wrong, the neighbour and her predecessors in title had been in adverse possession of the land up to the pine trees since at least 1980 and had thus acquired title to it.
The landowner appealed to the UT, arguing that the FTT had been wrong to treat the 1971 agreement as binding given that it failed to meet the formal requirements for a transfer of land and had not been signed by the registered proprietor. He also challenged the FTT’s conclusions on the 1949 conveyance and on adverse possession.
The UT considered that there was ample evidence from which the FTT was entitled to infer that the registered proprietor’s husband had been acting with her authority when he entered into the 1971 agreement. The FTT had also left no doubt that it had accepted that the agreement was not intended to achieve a transfer of land. As the FTT had recognised, it was irrelevant whether any land had actually been transferred, as the parties had expressed that they were simply recording the position of the boundary as it already was.
As the 1971 agreement was binding, the UT did not need to determine the grounds of appeal relating to the 1949 conveyance or to adverse possession.