Handy Cross Dev Co Ltd v Vanni Properties Ltd

A boundary plan incorporated into a transfer may be used to clarify an ambiguous transfer even if its principal purpose is drainage or construction, and even if it contains a warning not to scale the drawing. Its evidential weight depends on the circumstances. A later plan may be admissible as evidence of the parties’ intentions, but it must be sufficiently probative of both parties’ intentions. A plan submitted unilaterally for planning purposes will generally be insufficient where the local authority acted in separate capacities as landowner and planning authority. A later variation of drainage arrangements does not retrospectively remove the evidential significance of the earlier plan unless it was intended to alter the boundary.

Handy Cross appealed against a County Court judgment of HHJ Gerald dated 23 January 2025 concerning the boundary between land acquired by Handy Cross and adjoining land acquired by Vanni from Wycombe District Council. The dispute concerned whether the boundary should be determined by a detailed drainage plan incorporated into the 2018 transfer or by a later plan associated with a 2019 planning permission.

The appeal raised whether the drainage plan could be used to clarify the ambiguous transfer plan, whether a later planning plan was admissible evidence of the parties’ intentions, and what significance arose from the council’s separate capacities as landowner and planning authority.

1. The appeal was dismissed. The boundary identified by the drainage plan, with the southern dog-leg shown on the transfer plan, was upheld. The order requiring removal of the affected part of the access road and kerb, and payment of damages, therefore stood.
2. The applicable approach was objective construction of the transfer by reference to what a reasonable person, with the document and admissible information, would understand it to mean. Where the transfer plan was ambiguous, other terms of the dispositive documents and relevant surrounding matters could be used to clarify it.
3. The drainage plan was admissible for that purpose. Its principal purpose was to identify drainage arrangements and restrictions, but that did not prevent it from providing a more detailed indication of the boundary. The warning not to scale the plan did not exclude it, particularly because the boundary evidence relied on physical features rather than pure scaling. The missing southern dog-leg affected weight, not admissibility.
4. The later deed of variation replaced the drainage plan only for the purpose of relocating a cellular attenuation tank. It was not an agreement to fix or alter the boundary and did not remove the earlier plan’s evidential effect as at the date of the transfer.
5. Under Ali v Lane [2007] 1 P&CR 26, a post-transfer event could assist in determining the parties’ original intentions only if sufficiently probative of both parties’ intentions. The April 2019 planning plan was principally a unilateral act by Handy Cross. The council’s planning and property-owning functions were distinct, as recognised in Maximus Networks Ltd v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2018] EWHC 1933. There was no sufficient evidence that the council, in its capacity as landowner, adopted the later plan as defining the boundary.
6. The judge below had therefore been entitled to rely on the drainage plan and to reject the April 2019 plan as insufficiently bilateral and probative.

• High Court, Chancery Division: appeal from the County Court judgment and order of HHJ Gerald dated 23 and 24 January 2025. Appeal dismissed.