Owain Geraint Lewis-Han & Anor v Mary Yvonne Williams OBE & Anor

An appellate tribunal should not interfere with factual findings or multifactorial evaluations unless the decision is plainly wrong, affected by an identifiable error, or outside the range of reasonable disagreement. Where a lost conveyance is reconstructed, a Land Registry plan created with the conveyance available may be strong evidence of its terms. Adverse possession remains a fact-sensitive inquiry. Acts consistent with exercising a right of way may be equivocal and insufficient to establish the intention to possess. Earlier decisions are illustrations of general principles, not transposable rules. New evidence on appeal may be refused where it could have been obtained below and would not materially affect the result.

The appellants appealed against a decision of the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber, Land Registration Division), dated 11 December 2023. The FTT had held that the respondents’ title to the disputed driveway derived from a lost 1960 conveyance and had rejected the appellants’ alternative claim based on adverse possession.

The appeal challenged the finding as to the lost conveyance, the conclusions on factual possession and intention to possess, and the refusal to reconsider the matter in light of documents disclosed after the FTT hearing. The central issues were whether the FTT had made a material factual error, whether the evidence established adverse possession, and whether new evidence should be admitted.

1. Ground 1 allowed. The FTT had proceeded on the fundamental misapprehension that HM Land Registry did not possess the lost 1960 conveyance when it registered No. 2 in 1995. In fact, the conveyance was among the documents lodged on first registration. The filed plan was therefore good evidence of the conveyance’s terms.
2. Considering the evidence on the correct footing, the proper inference was that the lost conveyance did not include the disputed land. The contemporaneous 1961 conveyance and its block plan provided a better guide than the erroneous 1995 deed plan. The respondents’ application to be registered as proprietors on the basis of paper title therefore failed.
3. Ground 2 dismissed. The FTT’s conclusion that adverse possession was not established was a permissible multifactorial evaluation. The topography did not compel a different result. The FTT was entitled to regard much of Mr Jenkins’s use as compatible with access or an easement, and therefore equivocal. Resurfacing the driveway facilitated access and did not incorporate the disputed land into his adjoining property.
4. The authorities emphasised that each adverse possession case turns on its particular facts. The FTT was entitled to consider what an occupying owner might have done, while treating acts open to more than one interpretation as insufficiently clear to establish an intention to possess. An isolated error concerning permission for a water pipe did not undermine the overall conclusion. The witness assessment and approach to cross-examination disclosed no material unfairness.
5. Ground 3 dismissed. The additional plan arose from a search which the appellants had not pursued before the FTT. It concerned an uncompleted drainage negotiation and had little evidential significance. Applying the principles in Ladd v Marshall, the balance between finality and reaching the right result favoured refusing permission to rely on the new evidence.
6. The disputed land consequently remained owned by the Oddfellows Trustees. The appellants’ adverse possession application also failed.

• Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) — appeal against the First-tier Tribunal’s decision dated 11 December 2023. Ground 1 allowed; Grounds 2 and 3 dismissed.