Haycocks & Anor v Neville & Anor

Title documents are the starting point when determining a disputed boundary. Where their plans do not define the precise line, the court may supplement them with inferences from relevant topographical features and, if the conveyance is unclear or ambiguous, probative subsequent conduct showing the parties’ intention.

The court must determine the boundary from the evidence as a whole. It is not bound by a methodology shared by the parties’ experts and may reject their proposed locations where its conclusion properly flows from the evidence.

An agreement demarcating an unclear boundary may bind the parties and their successors without being made in writing.

The owners of adjoining houses disputed the location of the pivot point at which their common boundary turned towards the road. The registered title plan derived from a small-scale development plan known as Plan J. The competing surveyors proposed different locations by scaling measurements from different reference points.

The Bromley County Court considered Plan J alongside a later development plan, a boundary survey prepared for the original neighbours, the driveway and planted trees. It declared an intermediate location to be the pivot point and ordered the owners of No. 11, the Nevilles, to pay the costs.

The Nevilles appealed. The central issue was whether the judge had been entitled to reject both experts’ locations and use later plans, physical features and conduct to identify the boundary shown by the title documents.

1. Appeal dismissed. The County Court judge was entitled to determine the pivot point from the evidence as a whole. Her intermediate location was open to her, although neither expert had proposed it.

2. Title documents provide the starting point in a boundary dispute. Their plans may be incapable of identifying a precise line because of their scale and the thickness of the markings. The documents may then be supplemented by inferences from topographical features which existed, or may be supposed to have existed, when the conveyances were executed. Plan J was therefore the correct starting point, but its small scale, lack of dimensions and repeated photocopying made sole reliance on scaled measurements inappropriate.

3. A judge may in exceptional circumstances reject expert evidence from both sides. Here the judge did not substitute personal expertise. The experts shared an assumption that the task was confined to scaling from Plan J, but the judge was responsible for determining the boundary from all relevant evidence. She could consider Plan J, the later Plan K, the Wykes Plan, the circumstances of the Wykes survey and the physical location of the houses, driveway and trees.

4. Where information in a conveyance is unclear or ambiguous, probative subsequent conduct may be considered to identify what the parties intended. Applying Ali v Lane [2006] EWCA Civ 1532, the judge could use the later driveway, tree planting and boundary exercise as evidence of where the boundary was intended to lie. Beale v Harvey [2003] EWCA Civ 1883 was distinguishable because it concerned later conduct undertaken without knowledge that physical features had been placed beyond the boundary shown on the plan.

5. An agreement demarcating an unclear boundary binds the parties and their successors without requiring writing. Had an agreement adopting the Wykes Plan been pleaded and proved, it would have bound the Nevilles as successors. No such case had been established, so the judge used the plan as evidence rather than as a legally binding alteration of the boundary.

1. Court of Appeal (Civil Division): The appeal was dismissed. The County Court’s declaration identifying the pivot point and its costs order were left undisturbed: [2007] EWCA Civ 78.

2. Bromley County Court: HHJ Hamilton QC declared the experts’ plotted Point J to be the pivot point of the boundary and ordered the Nevilles to pay the proceedings’ costs and £10,000 on account.