Simon French & Anor v Ian Richard Hannah & Anor

In a determined-boundary dispute, the boundary is established by construing the deed which created it in its factual setting. A plan expressed to be for identification only, and a registered title plan showing only general boundaries, cannot by themselves fix the precise line. The court may consider the physical condition of the land and objectively known circumstances at the date of the conveyance.

Where sufficient evidence permits a binary choice between proposed lines, the tribunal may determine the exact boundary under Land Registration Act 2002, section 60. The absence of a precise depiction of a visible alteration on imprecise conveyancing plans does not displace a finding that the alteration had occurred before the boundary was created.

The respondents applied to HM Land Registry for a determined boundary between Heatherwood West and Heatherwood South. The appellants objected, and the matter was referred to the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber), reference 2021/0564.

The First-tier Tribunal held that the access drive had been widened before the conveyance which created the disputed boundary, but its order incorrectly required a 20-foot width between points B and E. Both parties agreed that this part of the decision had to be set aside. The dispute on appeal was whether the boundary followed the eastern or western edge of an unsurfaced area, Area A.

The central issue was the proper construction of the First-tier Tribunal’s unchallenged findings of fact and of the 1959 conveyance.

1. Appeal dismissed. The First-tier Tribunal’s decision was set aside only insofar as it concerned the boundary between points B and E. The Upper Tribunal substituted a determination that the boundary follows the DB plan from point A to point E.
2. The applicable question was what a reasonable lay purchaser would have understood was being conveyed in May 1959. That required contextual construction of the conveyance which created the boundary. The plans were for identification only, while registered title plans showed only general boundaries. The physical state of the land and objective facts known at the time could therefore be considered, consistently with Pennock v Hodgson [2010] EWCA Civ 873 and Chadwick v Abbotswood Properties Ltd [2004] EWHC 1058 (Ch).
3. Read as a whole, the First-tier Tribunal’s findings rejected the proposition that the drive had remained 10 feet wide. Its references to Area A as part of the drive, and its rejection of the appellants’ adverse-possession case, showed that it had found Area A was incorporated into the drive before the 1959 conveyance. That widening would have been visible to the purchaser. The judge erred only by treating the drive as 20 feet wide continuously to point E; the evidence supported a tapering widened area represented by Area A.
4. The lack of a bulge for Area A on later conveyancing and Land Registry plans did not undermine that conclusion. Those plans were imprecise and did not purport to record the exact boundary or every physical alteration. The Registrar was directed to record the substituted determined boundary under section 60 of the Land Registration Act 2002.

• Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber): [2025] UKUT 190 (LC). The appeal was dismissed, but the First-tier Tribunal’s erroneous boundary determination between points B and E was set aside and replaced with a determination following the DB plan from A to E.
• First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber): reference 2021/0564, decision dated 27 November 2023. It determined a boundary following an application under section 60 of the Land Registration Act 2002.