Adverse possession

Baxter v Mannion [2011] EWCA Civ 120; SJ 8 March p4

Thomas Mannion was the owner of a small field on which Steven Baxter grazed his horses from time to time. In August 2005 Mr Baxter made an application to the Land Registry for registration of the field in his name under para 1(1) of Sched 6 to the Land Registration Act 2002 on the grounds that he had been in adverse possession of the field since 1985, supporting the application with a statutory declaration to that effect. The Land Registry sent Mr Mannion a notice giving him 65 working days to object to the new registration, but as a result of a series of family tragedies Mr Mannion did not respond in time and the property was registered in Mr Baxter’s name. There was no provision for extending the prescribed time. The important point of principle was whether a man who had got his name registered as the proprietor by wrongly claiming he had been in adverse possession for 10 years should keep his title if the original proprietor had failed to return a form to the Land Registry within 56 days. Or could the original proprietor apply to the registrar to have the register of title rectified by ‘correcting a mistake’? Does the machinery of the Land Registration Act 2002 allow a party to take someone else’s land by operation of a bureaucratic machinery which trumps reality? It would be an invitation to afford to limit this to a mistake made through some official error. A dishonest applicant (perhaps knowing the registered proprietor would be away or otherwise unable or unlikely to send in a NAP form in time or at all) could falsely claim he had been in adverse possession for 10 years. His application would succeed because on its face it looked in order and the true owner would lose his land. For land owners to lose land without compensation in this way would breach art 1 of the first protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Court of Appeal upheld the rectification of the register on the grounds of correcting a mistake.