Ideally, any party wall or boundary dispute is settled amicably between neighbours, perhaps with the help of a chartered building surveyor to provide expert testimony in situations which require arbitration. However, this is not always the case and the results can shape the law around surveying.
According to an article by The Times, boundary disputes are increasingly being decided in courtrooms which often puts several major property and boundary law principles under scrutiny.
In fact, a recent case that reached the United Kingdom Supreme Court has the potential to fundamentally change the interpretation of land registration laws, the Party Wall Act and the principle of adverse possession.
Started By A Party Wall Misalignment
The case of Brown v Ridley and another concerns a strip of undeveloped land in Consett, County Durham that was registered to the former since 2002 but had been used without incident from 2005 up until 2018.
Following the removal of a hedge and fence that technically encroached on Mr Brown’s land as part of planned construction work., Mr and Mrs Ridley applied to the Land Registry for adverse possession.
Since the fence and hedge had not been objected to up to that point, they had been in possession of it for the legally required time.
Mr Brown objected, believing that construction work for which the Ridleys had applied for planning permission was in violation of the Party Wall Act. Unable to come to an amicable agreement, both parties went to court for what turned out to be over five years.
Long Desired Clarification
The rules of adverse possession have been somewhat unclear, and the initial progression of the case did not provide legal experts or surveyors with any desired clarity.
The First Tier Tribunal, which initially oversaw the case, ruled in favour of the Ridleys, given that they reasonably believed they owned the parcel of land from 2005 until 2018.
However, the decision was reversed at the Upper Tribunal following an appeal by Mr Brown, which cited the case of Zarb v Perry as a reason to reverse the decision.
The dispute was that there were two interpretations of the wording of the law in question, Schedule 6 of the Land Registration Act 2002, both of which had been used in the case so far.
The passage in question, paragraph 5 (4)(b), could be interpreted to mean any ten year period of adverse possession, which was the interpretation of the First Tier Tribunal, or it could require a claim to be made the date that it was discovered they did not have ownership of the land.
As the Ridleys waited several months before making their application, under the stricter interpretation used in Zarb v Parry, they would not have the right to the land under dispute.
The Leapfrog Appeal
This led to a leapfrog appeal to the Supreme Court, given the public interest in clarifying the law once and for all, and in 2024 the five justices of the UKSC ruled in favour of the Ridleys, noting that the “ordinary meaning” of the wording of the law meant any ten-year period, not one that ends with a Land Registry application.
This will change a lot of party wall disputes going forward which concern technically incorrect but long-standing boundaries, and hopefully lead to less adversarial legal disputes going forward.