Property Boundaries- Unregistered Land

Monkertron

Hello, 

I have seen a few posts about property boundaries, but I think this situation may be a bit more complicated.

There is a rear access Lane out the back of our house (1930's Semi) which is shared by the houses that back onto it. In the deeds it says that everyone's property that backs onto the Lane has a right to access. I ordered a report on the Lane from Land Registry and its unregistered land. As I understand it, this means its Private land, and everyone who has the right to access jointly owns the land, and are jointly responsible. There are many of these rear access Lanes around, and I think it’s the same situation, or similar for many. This seems to be the case from discussions I have had with owners of other rear access lanes in the local area.

Issue
There is an adjoining block of flats on the opposite side of the Lane from our house. These flats are owned and maintained by a housing association/ property management company. Where they have built the carpark for the flats they have built over the boundary and into the Lane according to the Land Registery boundary. I can see this by comparing satellite images and the Land Registry boundary. The flats have been there since the late 80s early 90s I believe.

If they have built onto our Private land and gone over the Land Registry boundary, are they in the wrong, and would I have a case to get them to amend it?

I thought about contacting them about it, but I contacted them previously about the maintenance of the car park fence, and they were dismissive and less than helpful. 
I understand they do not have to maintain a fence around their property at all, but they have built the car park foundations (with fence on top) clearly onto the land of the private Lane. 

Any help or suggestions (or just a steer) would be greatly appreciated. 

Thanks    

The_Unready

How much money are you willing to spend to enforce your assumptions? I suggest that it would need to be a sizeable sum.

daveyjp

Unregistered does not mean 'private'.  Lots of land owned by public authorities and Government isn't registered.

It just means the land has never been registered, usually because it hasn't been sold since compulsory registration came into being.

As the flats are now almost 40 years old bringing any action will be difficult and potentially very expensive:

https://www.legalfutures.co.uk/latest-news/judge-bemoans-huge-costs-of-17-inch-boundary-dispute

CSI_Yorkshire

Monkertron said:

If they have built onto our Private land and gone over the Land Registry boundary, are they in the wrong, and would I have a case to get them to amend it?

Yes.

But nothing that you have said demonstrates that they have built on your private land.

Right of access doesn't give you ownership.  That would be a very strange assertion.  There are lots of properties that have right of access across someone else's land.

[Deleted User]

Hi,

when flats were built, they would need to apply for planning permission and adjoining properties would've been notified of plans.

I would've thought if there had been a problem then somebody would've objected.

Section62

Monkertron said:

There is a rear access Lane out the back of our house (1930's Semi) which is shared by the houses that back onto it. In the deeds it says that everyone's property that backs onto the Lane has a right to access. I ordered a report on the Lane from Land Registry and its unregistered land. As I understand it, this means its Private land, and everyone who has the right to access jointly owns the land, and are jointly responsible. There are many of these rear access Lanes around, and I think it’s the same situation, or similar for many. This seems to be the case from discussions I have had with owners of other rear access lanes in the local area.

The most common situation with 1930's development is that ownership of these access ways was retained by the developer.  The next most common is for the land to be divided up between the properties in association with their boundaries of their back gardens (i.e. the access way is like part of their back garden which they aren't allowed to fence off).

This would be ownership by the residents 'severally', which isn't the same as joint ownership.

Joint ownership - where all the residents collectively own the access way in its entirety - is more complicated to do legally and in my experience wasn't that common in the 1930's.  One of the complexities is ensuring that a property owner sells their share of the access way at the same time as selling their property, so ownership of the two doesn't get split.  This is doable, but seems to be avoided by 1930's developers generally.

The outcome is lots of development from the 20's through to the late 40's that have access ways with an owner who no longer exists (defunct or deceased). This doesn't mean nobody owns the land, e.g. it may be bona vacantia.

I would check the deeds very carefully to make sure your understanding of the ownership arrangements is correct.

Monkertron said:

There is an adjoining block of flats on the opposite side of the Lane from our house. These flats are owned and maintained by a housing association/ property management company. Where they have built the carpark for the flats they have built over the boundary and into the Lane according to the Land Registery boundary. I can see this by comparing satellite images and the Land Registry boundary. The flats have been there since the late 80s early 90s I believe.

If they have built onto our Private land and gone over the Land Registry boundary, are they in the wrong, and would I have a case to get them to amend it?

Unless the boundary has been 'determined' then what Land Registry are showing is probably a 'general boundary' showing the approximate location.  These are typically shown on mapping produced by the Ordnance Survey which isn't precisely accurate.

Comparing satellite images to maps has to be done with caution.  Maps are a two-dimensional representation of a 3-D surface as if you were looking down from above.  'Satellite images' (which may just be aerial photographs) are also a two-dimensional representation and have to be adjusted (stretched and rotated) to achieve the best match to the mapping.

There is only one point in an image of the ground below where the camera was looking directly downwards, so only this point can be an exact match to a map.  The further you go from that point outwards, the less vertical the direction you are looking at objects on the ground ('slant') and therefore the less accurate the match to mapping.

The sources of 'satellite images' available to the public do use clever software to achieve the best fit they can between these images and the OS grid, but the approach has limited accuracy.

It is more likely what you are seeing in terms of the boundary being wrong is an artefact of the way in which the images and mapping have been produced.  It wouldn't be proof that the boundary is in the wrong place.

To prove that you'd need a topographic survey, combined with accurate information about where the boundaries should be.

silvercar

This thread may have more traction on the housing broad. A regular poster @Land_Registry may also offer some insight.

I have asked the forum team to move it.

MSE_ForumTeam5

Moved as per @silvercar's suggestion

Land_Registry

Others have covered much of what we might say here so the following is largely for emphasis only
Unregistered simply means we have no record of who the legal owner is. Nothing more than that so unless someone provides legal proof (deeds generally) you can’t assume who owns it. 

A right of access doesn’t mean you legally own it either individually or collectively. 

Roads can be adopted by the local authority. Or left unadapted. Many developments see roads built and adopted and sometimes the builder transfers the legal ownership. Sometimes they don’t - nowadays it’s more likely for them to do so. 

If you have been granted a right of access then look at the grant as whoever granted the rights presumably owns the land 
We register general boundaries as mentioned. If they’ve built on land they don’t own then the landowner has a case against them. If they’ve hindered your right of access then you may have a case against them.