Broadly speaking, to claim land by adverse possession, you will need to prove the following:-
(i) Uninterrupted factual possession of the land – i.e. a sufficient degree of exclusive physical control over the land. This will depend upon the individual circumstances of the case;
(ii) Intention to possess the land during that period of possession;
(iii) That your possession has been without the consent of the owner; and
(iv) That you have possessed the land for the requisite period of time.
To claim adverse possession, an application will usually be made to the Land Registry.
(i) Regularly inspect your property (in particular if it is property/land where you do not reside). If you are aware of anyone occupying your land, you should take legal advice in respect of evicting those persons.
(ii) Register any unregistered land. This will ensure that you fall within the new 2002 regime which is weighted in favour of the owner of the land.
(iii) Keep the Land Registry up to date with your address for service of documents so that if anyone makes an application in relation to your land, it comes to your attention. You can give the Land Registry email addresses or overseas addresses if necessary.
Take immediate legal advice. If you do nothing, you are at risk of the Land Registry accepting the squatter’s application.
Before 2002, a squatter could apply to be registered as the owner of land if they had been in adverse possession of the land for a minimum of 12 years.
In 2002, the Land Registration Act was introduced. This Act only applies where the land is registered at the Land Registry (registered land) and the person in possession did not acquire 12 years possession of the land before 13 October 2003. Whilst the person in possession only needs to show 10 years adverse possession, on making an application to be registered as proprietor, the registered proprietor will be notified and given the opportunity to oppose the application. The process is therefore weighted in favour of the landowner.
Where the land in question is unregistered land, or registered land where the possession relied upon is for a period of at least 12 years ending before 13 October 2003, the previous regime still applies.
Adverse possession is the process whereby a person who is not the legal owner of land can become the legal owner by possessing that land for a period of time set by law. Stories of squatters deliberately entering onto land, residing there for a number of years and then claiming it as their own are sometimes reported. However, whilst this scenario does occasionally occur, most acts of adverse possession are more subtle. A more common example may be where someone has always believed they own a section of land, for example, at the end of their garden (perhaps because the boundary was not fenced) and they therefore always treated it as their own. If it later transpires that the land in question belongs to somebody else, the owner of the garden may have obtained ownership of it by virtue of their adverse possession if they have possessed it for the requisite period of time. Another example could be where a person knows that the land is not theirs, for example, because they occupy the land under a licence, but the licence expired and the person remains on the land and tends to the land for the minimum period of time required by law.
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