Adverse Possession in the Supreme Court: Brown v Ridley

Land law cases do not often appear before the Supreme Court, especially when they concern what seems to be a fairly innocuous point relating to the construction of the adverse possession provisions in the Land Registration Act 2002 (LRA). It is even more rare for such cases to reach the Supreme Court directly by way of leapfrog appeal from the Upper Tribunal. However, that is what happened in Brown v Ridley, a case in which the Supreme Court was called upon to resolve the construction of schedule 6, paragraph 5(4)(c) of the LRA. Specifically, the question before the Court was whether an applicant for registration relying on their adverse possession of land adjacent to their own needed to maintain a reasonable belief that the land in question belonged to them right up to the date of the application. The Court held that on a true construction of the statutory provisions they did not have to maintain such a belief right up to, or even close to, the date of their application. Rather, the requirement was to hold such a belief for a ten year period at any time during the currency of the current period of adverse possession. In doing so, the Supreme Court confirmed that the approach of the Court of Appeal in Zarb v Parry was wrong, and agreed with the views expressed in both the First Tier and Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber).