The Land Registration Act 2002 introduced a new regime that makes it more difficult for squatters to obtain title to registered land. The registered proprietor can “object” to a squatter’s application, if he/she has not been in adverse possession for the requisite ten-year period, and/or can choose to serve a counternotice on Form NAP relying on new statutory grounds of opposition set out in the legislation.
If and when they are invoked, the new statutory grounds of opposition require the squatter to prove that he/she is entitled to be registered as proprietor: (i) on the ground of an estoppel; (ii) for some other reason; or (iii) because there is a boundary dispute and the squatter and his/her predecessors have for the past 10 years at least reasonably believed that they owned the land. If none of these conditions are satisfied, the squatter’s application will be rejected even though he/she has been in adverse possession for the requisite period.
Under the new regime, on receiving an application from a squatter, the Land Registry will send the registered proprietor a notice, accompanied by explanatory notes and Form NAP. This needs to be returned to the Land Registry within 65 business days. If a registered proprietor fails to act within that period, the squatter will be registered as the owner of the land.
The issue at stake in King v Suffolk County Council [2016] UKFTT 6 (PC); [2017] PLSCS 19 was whether the council was entitled to require a squatter to jump through the new statutory hoops, even though it failed to complete and return Form NAP to the Land Registry. Instead, the council had emailed the Land Registry, just half an hour before the deadline for responding to the squatter’s application was due to expire, claiming that the squatter had not been in adverse possession at all.
Unfortunately for the council, the evidence supported the squatter’s claim that she had been in adverse possession for the requisite period. Consequently, the council tried to fall back on the statutory grounds of opposition, since the squatter’s application would then be bound to fail. The only possible claim that the squatter could make was that there had been a boundary dispute and that she had reasonably believed that the land belonged to her. However, that was out of the question on the facts of this case. The squatter had known that the council was registered with title to the land (and it would not suffice to argue that she had reasonably believed that the land had become hers, thanks to her adverse possession of it).
Was it too late to change tack now? Unfortunately for the council, the tribunal ruled that it was. Registered proprietors who fail to complete Form NAP properly will not necessarily deprive themselves of the right to require squatters to jump through the hoops introduced in the 2002 Act. However, the proprietor’s intentions must be clear: Hopkins v Beacon [2011] EWHC 2899 (Ch). And, in this case, despite being fully informed, there was nothing in the council’s email, or subsequent correspondence with the Land Registry, to suggest that the council was seeking to rely on the new rules. Consequently, the applicant need only prove that she had been in adverse possession for the requisite period – and, having done so, her application succeeded.
Allyson Colby is a property law consultant
