We regularly have enquiries from clients who wish to claim ownership of land by adverse possession or whose land is subject to an adverse possession claim by someone else.
To claim adverse possession, you must prove factual possession, an intention to possess, occupation without consent, and continuous use for the required number of years.
• Factual Possession: You must have physical control and exclusive occupation of the land, such as by building a fence, maintaining the garden, or locking a gate.
• Intention to Possess: You must act as though you are the true owner and show a clear intent to exclude everyone else, including the actual owner.
• Without Consent: Your use of the land must be completely unauthorized, meaning you do not have a lease, rental agreement, or permission from the owner.
• Open and Obvious: Your occupation must be clear and visible to the public and the legal owner, rather than hidden or secretive.
• Continuous and Uninterrupted: You must use the property consistently without any major breaks that reset the timeline.
Required Time Periods
• Registered Land: You need at least 10 years of continuous occupation before you can apply to the Land Registry for possessory title.
• Unregistered Land: You need at least 12 years of continuous occupation under the Limitation Act 1980.
For many years it was considered that land needed to be fence or enclosed in some way to demonstrate possession. This may still be a requirement if the circumstances require it, but earlier this year the Courts decided that a fence would not always be necessary to succeed in claiming adverse possession.
In the case of Dobson v Unsted (2026) the Upper Tribunal decided that mowing the grass, raking leaves and scarifying part of a front residential lawn for more than 10 years were sufficient. A garden gnome, subsequently placed on the lawn by the registered owners to try to reclaim ownership, was considered too little too late to stop it.
The Facts
The owners of 29 Pointers Hill in Dorking applied to be registered as the owners of a tiny triangle of land (roughly 1 metre by 2.3 metres) sitting between the shared driveway and legal boundary with their neighbours at number 27. The land had been part of number 27’s registered title since the two houses were carved out of a single plot in 1994, but for decades, nobody at number 27 had done anything with it.
The First-tier Tribunal (FTT) rejected most of the original claim, finding that there was adverse possession only from 2018, when the applicants planted a flower bed. This was five years short of the ten years required to succeed. On appeal, the Upper Tribunal (in a judgement by Elizabeth Cooke) overturned that decision, holding that the applicants and their predecessors had been in adverse possession since at least 2002.
Why did the appeal succeed?
The central question was whether routine garden maintenance, including mowing, raking, clearing twigs, letting children play on the grass, replacing topsoil, planting herbs, and placing a “29” house number sign, could amount to adverse possession.
The Upper Tribunal held that it could. The reasoning turned on a well-established but often underappreciated principle: the nature of the land determines what acts of possession are required. For example, if all you can do on marshland is go shooting, shooting is enough. If a rough patch at the end of a garden is only good for a compost heap and some weeding, that will do. And if the land in question is a patch of open lawn in a street of open-plan front gardens, mowing and routine maintenance is precisely what an owner would do with it.
The FTT had dismissed mowing as merely “tidy and neighbourly”, holding that something more, such as digging a flower bed or putting up a fence, was needed to claim possession of an open lawn. The Upper Tribunal disagreed. Judge Cooke noted that putting up a fence in a neighbourhood of open gardens would have looked “incongruous” and that requiring a change of use to establish adverse possession of a lawn was wrong in law.
Crucially, the Upper Tribunal found that the FTT had erred in assessing each act of possession in isolation rather than looking at the full picture. Individually, children playing on the grass would not be enough; a house number sign would not be enough; wheeling the mower across the land would not be enough. But taken together, the cumulative effect was clear: the applicants and their predecessors were treating the land as their own, and nobody at number 27 was doing anything with it at all.
The Upper Tribunal put it bluntly: “People do not generally mow their neighbours’ grass without their agreement. Nor do they let their children play on it. Nor do they replace topsoil on it or plant herbs in it”.
What about the sign?
The appellants placed a “29” house number sign on the disputed land in 2016, first on the verge and then on the disputed triangle itself. The FTT had held that this was “insufficient to indicate possession”, reasoning that the sign had to be visible and was adjacent to the right of way serving number 29 and so did not assist the applicants’ case.
The Upper Tribunal took a different view. Whilst acknowledging that the sign alone would not have been enough to establish adverse possession, Judge Cooke held that when considered alongside the totality of the appellants’ activities, mowing, raking, planting, children playing, it formed part of a cumulative picture of possession.
What does this mean for landowners?
Adverse possession does not require obvious physical acts, such as putting up a fence or wall. In the right context, quietly maintaining a patch of grass for long enough can be sufficient.
For landowners, the lessons are:
- Know your boundaries. Small parcels of land are worth understanding. This is especially true in larger parcels or development sites, where the value of such land might not be evident until much later in time.
- Use your land. Even small or seemingly insignificant areas should not be neglected. If someone else is maintaining part of your land and you are doing nothing, the clock may already be ticking on adverse possession (or alternatively on the acquisition of an easement,
- Act promptly. If you spot a neighbouring owner treating part of your land as their own, do not ignore it. Interrupt a possession claim before it matures.
Whilst this case related to a tiny triangle of residential garden land, the law applies equally to all land and property.
The law on adverse possession is complicated, and we recommend getting advice as soon as you are aware of a possible problem.
Charrette Law
August 2026
