The Ridleys sought registration of disputed land adjacent to their property based on adverse possession under the Land Registration Act 2002. The Supreme Court resolved an ambiguity in Schedule 6, holding that reasonable belief in ownership need only persist for ten years within the adverse possession period, not until the application date.
Facts
Mr and Mrs Ridley were registered as proprietors of land including a dwelling house known as Valley View in 2004. The disputed land was a strip running along the boundary between the Ridleys’ garden and land owned by Mr Brown. The First-tier Tribunal found that from 2004 until their application for registration on 20 December 2019, the Ridleys were in adverse possession of the disputed land, using it initially as part of their garden and later as part of a site for a new house called Moonrakers.
The Ridleys reasonably believed they owned the disputed land from 2004 until approximately February 2018, when the planning permission process for Moonrakers revealed evidence destroying this belief. There was therefore a gap of about 21 months between the ending of their 14-year period of reasonable belief and the date of their application for registration.
Issues
The central issue was the construction of paragraph 5(4)(c) of Schedule 6 to the Land Registration Act 2002, specifically whether:
Construction A
The period of reasonable belief must be at least ten years ending on the date of the application itself.
Construction B
The period of reasonable belief can be any period of at least ten years within the potentially longer period of adverse possession which ends on the date of the application.
The respondent argued that construction A was correct, and that any gap between reasonable belief ending and application being made could be accommodated by the de minimis principle.
Judgment
The Supreme Court unanimously allowed the appeal, adopting construction B. Lord Briggs, delivering the judgment with which all other Justices agreed, provided several reasons for this conclusion.
Grammatical Analysis
Lord Briggs found that the statutory language supported construction B:
Just looking at the key phrase: ‘for at least ten years of the period of adverse possession ending on the date of the application’, the words ‘ending on the date of the application’ naturally describe the end of a period i.e. the period just described as the period of adverse possession.
Practical Workability
The Court emphasised that construction A would render the boundary condition virtually illusory in typical cases:
An application for registration of title to adjacent land along an undefined (i.e. general) boundary is not something which can be put together in an afternoon. It needs professional advice, probably from a surveyor, evidence about the locus in quo and probably a plan of it, together with evidence about the nature of the necessary ten years’ possession of it, which may well have to include evidence about the possession of predecessors.
Rejection of De Minimis Argument
Lord Briggs rejected the submission that the de minimis principle could save construction A:
The need to read in such an extension of time or period of grace is an important matter of substance. It is the very converse of trivial, inconsequential or irrelevant.
He further stated:
The one or two months’ minimum time which she reasonably accepted would probably be needed in a typical case to prepare an application for registration is by no means trivial or negligible, even when measured as an add-on to a period of ten years. By no stretch of the imagination does a period of one or two months answer the description of de minimis.
Purpose of the Legislation
The Court noted that the boundary condition already serves the purpose of confining adverse possession claims:
Taken as a whole, the boundary condition read with the other two conditions is plainly designed to confine reliance upon adverse possession (where no other legal or equitable right is available to S) to the scenario where the register is at its weakest in answering questions about land ownership, namely issues as to boundaries.
Treatment of Zarb v Parry
The Court declined to follow the assumption in Zarb v Parry [2011] EWCA Civ 1306 that construction A was correct, noting that the point was not argued in that case and the assumption was made without reasoning.
Human Rights
The Court rejected the argument that construction B would breach Article 1 of Protocol 1 to the ECHR, noting that the significantly reduced scope for adverse possession under the 2002 Act compared to the old regime (found compliant in JA Pye (Oxford) Ltd v United Kingdom) meant the regime was clearly within the UK’s margin of appreciation.
Implications
This judgment clarifies an important aspect of the adverse possession regime under the Land Registration Act 2002. It confirms that applicants seeking registration based on the boundary condition need only demonstrate reasonable belief in ownership for ten years at some point during their adverse possession, not necessarily up to the date of application. This interpretation preserves the practical utility of the boundary condition in resolving genuine boundary disputes, whilst maintaining the 2002 Act’s objective of reducing the scope for adverse possession claims against registered landowners. The decision provides important guidance for practitioners advising clients on boundary disputes and applications for registration based on adverse possession.
Verdict: The appeal was allowed. The Supreme Court restored the decision of the First-tier Tribunal, holding that the appellants Mr and Mrs Ridley are entitled to be registered as proprietors of the disputed land. The Court adopted construction B of paragraph 5(4)(c) of Schedule 6 to the Land Registration Act 2002, meaning that the required period of reasonable belief in ownership need only be for at least ten years within the period of adverse possession, and does not need to persist until the date of the application for registration.
Source: Brown v Ridley [2025] UKSC 7
