The Court of Appeal is being asked to decide whether the criminalising of trespass by “living in” a residential building has prevented time running for adverse possession claims.
The Chief Land Registrar is appealing a ruling earlier this year that the change in the law did not throw a “spanner in the works” of the doctrine of adverse possession.
In May, Ouseley J found that the Chief Land Registrar was wrong to cancel an adverse possession claim to the title of the Newbury Park, because of the effect of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPOA).
Allowing Keith Best’s appeal, he said that the registrar’s decision was founded on an error of law as to the effect of section 144 of LASPOA on the operation of adverse possession under the Land Registration Act 2002.
Now the Chief Land Registrar is seeking to persuade the Court of Appeal to overturn that decision.
Jonathan Karas QC argued on behalf of the Registrar that the High Court judge got it wrong.
He said: “On the true construction of Schedule 6 of the Land Registration Act, in accordance with well-established principles of statutory construction, an applicant is not entitled to rely upon possession which constitutes part and parcel of a criminal offence to underpin an application to be registered as the proprietor of an estate in land. An application on such basis is substantially defective and the appellant is entitled to reject it.”
The Court has now adjourned the appeal for written closing arguments, and will give a written decision in the case at a later date, possibly before the end of the year.
In the ruling under challenge, Ouseley J warned that, even if Mr Best’s application to be registered as the owner of the property is ultimately successful, LASPOA means that he may yet be prosecuted under it for certain of his acts of possession that give rise to his claim.
Nevertheless, he quashed the Registrar’s decision and ruled that Mr Best’s application can proceed through the next stage in Schedule 6 of the 2002 Act.
Mr Best is claiming title to 35 Church Road, Newbury Park, through adverse possession, having entered the abandoned and vandalised property in 1997. He carried out works of improvement and moved in at the end of January 2012, but says he has treated the house as his own since 2001
