Plaintiff using owner’s land for car parking as from 1982 – Permanent surfacing not begun before 1988 – Whether earlier use amounted to taking of possession – Whether claimants then had necessary intention to possess – Whether later planning application and issue of certificate as to interest in land amounted to acknowledgement of owner’s title
At all material times the Groveway Stadium, Milton Keynes, and substantial areas of surrounding land were owned by the plaintiff and its predecessors in title (together referred to as the claimants). Other surrounding areas were owned by the Milton Keynes Development Corporation (MKDC), the predecessor of the defendant commission. So far as material, all areas lay within a 30-acre rectangular site known as the Ashland Grid. By a deed of exchange made in August 1982 between the claimants and MKDC, the claimants acquired, among other parcels, certain land (the brown land) for the purpose of providing additional parking space to serve both the normal use of the stadium as well as a Sunday market, a new venture. MKDC took care to retain a three-quarter acre area of waste land (the yellow land) lying between the brown land and the highway for the purpose (well known to the claimants) of controlling the only practical means of access to any future comprehensive redevelopment of the entire Ashland Grid. The temporary permission to operate the Sunday market was conditional upon the claimants carrying out certain clearance work and maintaining a barrier between the parking areas and a caravan site. Over the remaining months of 1982 the claimants, treating the brown and yellow land as a single plot, removed accumulated rubbish, carried out sufficient levelling to allow access for cars and occasionally scattered gravel over the surface so levelled. Towards the end of 1987 the claimants put down a permanent surface resting on hardcore to a depth of 18 in, at the same time replacing an insecure hedge, which separated the yellow land from the highway, with a wooden fence. The use of the yellow land continued, as before, with no objection by MKDC.
In December 1991 an agent for the claimants signed and submitted a planning application relating to the brown and yellow land, and, as required by section 66 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, also signed and issued a certificate as to the interests in those sites. Subsequently, the title to the yellow land became an issue between the parties and in May 1997 the claimants issued proceedings alleging that title had been acquired under the Limitation Act 1980 by reason of continuous adverse possession since August 1982.
Held The claim was dismissed.
1. Adverse possession had not begun, if at all, before the end of 1987. While the parking of cars could amount to such exercise, the degree of physical control required depended on the size and character of the land in issue: see Williams v Usherwood (1983) 45 P&CR 235. As emerged from evidence before the court, the acts relied on before that date could not amount to taking possession. Nor had the claimants demonstrated the necessary intention (animus possedendi) to exclude all persons including the true owner, as the earlier work had clearly been done in order to comply with planning requirements relating to a possibly short term Sunday market project.
2. Since the 1991 planning application and certificate had been signed by the same person, the defendant had also established that these amounted to an acknowledgement by the claimants of the defendant’s title, causing time to run afresh under section 29 of the Limitation Act 1980, it being permissible, where necessary, to resort to extrinsic evidence to identify the land not belonging to the applicant: see Jones v Bellgrove Properties [1949] 2 KB 700.
Gary Cowen (instructed by Burges Salmon, of Bristol) appeared for the plaintiff; Beverly-Ann Rogers (instructed by Denton Hall, of Milton Keynes) appeared for the defendant.