Adverse possession: Boundary matters

In brief

• The facts of Dowse v Bradford.
• Paragraph 5(4): the boundary condition.
• Reflection and implications.

Most property lawyers will know that the law of adverse possession of registered land changed fundamentally, albeit prospectively, when Sch 6 to the Land Registration Act 2002 (the Act) came into force on 13 October 2003. As explained by Mr Justice Fancourt in Dowse v City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council [2020] UKUT 0202 (LC), [2020] All ER (D) 112 (Jul) at [10], the Act:

‘replaced the partly common law and partly statutory regime for adverse possession in the case of registered land and introduced a new statutory regime, based on the common law concept of adverse possession of land. In the context of registered land, the change… is contained within Schedule 6 to the Act.’

One of the challenges of practice in this area is that one