Possessory title — Grazing licences — Applicant landowner refusing to renew licences — Licencees continuing to farm disputed land — House of Lords holding land being occupied by adverse possession — Applicant complaining of breach of human rights — Whether UK law on adverse possession operating in violation of European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms — Complaint upheld
Between 1975 and 1977, the applicants acquired the disputed land, intending to hold it until planning permission could be obtained for development. From 1977, the applicants entered into seasonal agreements licensing the owners of the adjoining property to graze animals on the land. The last such agreement was made on 1 February 1983, whereby the licensee acquired the right to graze the land until the end of that year or to take one cut of grass. Later that year, he agreed to plough and reseed the land for £650. In June 1984, he bought the standing crop of grass for £1,100, and, during the following months, two letters were sent on his behalf requesting a further licence, both of which went unanswered.
The licensee made no further contact with the applicants, and continued to farm the land, carrying out various fertilising and maintenance operations that would have been uneconomic had the applicant retaken possession.
In 1997, the licensee, relying upon section 15 of the Limitation Act 1980, claimed that he had acquired possessory title to the land and that the applicants were deemed to hold the land in trust for him under the Land Registration Act 1925. The applicants failed at first instance but succeeded before the Court of Appeal, where it was held that the licensee had not shown the necessary intention to dispossess the applicants. The House of Lords allowed the licensee’s appeal holding that he had possession of the land in the ordinary sense of the word so that the applicants had been dispossessed within the meaning of the 1980 Act: see JA Pye (Oxford) Ltd v Graham [2002] UKHL 30; [2002] 28 EG 129 (CS).
The applicants complained to the European Court of Human Rights. The issue was whether the UK law on adverse possession, by which the applicant had lost its land to a neighbour, operated in violation of its right to peaceful enjoyment of possessions under Article 1 of the First Protocol to the Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
Held: The complaint was upheld.
The application of the 1925 and 1980 Acts to deprive the applicant of title to the registered land imposed upon it an excessive burden and upset the fair balance between the public interest, on the one hand, and the applicants’ right to peaceful enjoyment of possessions, on the other, and constituted an interference by the state with the applicants’ rights under Article 1 of the First Protocol.
The means employed and the aim sought to be realised by any measure depriving a person of his or her possessions or controlling their use had to be proportionate. In this case, not only had the applicants been deprived of their property but they had received no compensation for the loss, which was a result of exceptional severity.
Compensation terms under the relevant legislation were material to determining whether the contested measure provided the requisite fair balance and whether it imposed a disproportionate burden upon the applicants. The taking of property without payment of an amount reasonably related to its value would normally constitute a disproportionate interference that could not be justified under Article 1 of the First Protocol, although that provision did not guarantee a right to full compensation in all circumstances, since the legitimate objectives of public interest might demand less than reimbursement of the full market value.
In the present case, although it was the adverse possession that had led to the applicant’s loss of title, but for the provisions of the 1925 and 1980 Acts, the adverse possession would have had no effect upon the applicants’ title or upon its ability to repossess the land. Accordingly, Article 1 had been violated.
David Pannick QC (instructed by Darbys Solicitors, of Oxford) appeared for the applicants; Jonathan Crow (instructed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) appeared for the defendant
Eileen O’Grady, barrister