How buying rural land can throw up legal complexities for the unwary

One of my recent cases threw up a multitude of legal issues in a single project.

A long-standing farming client was buying 40 acres of ancient woodland dating from the 17th century and wanted to set up a shoot.

This sounds straightforward, how complicated could it be? A closer look confirmed that the woodland was reached through a neighbour’s field but there was nothing in the deeds about access.

We negotiated a solution where the seller made a statutory declaration covering the last 20 years to prove a ‘prescriptive right of way’, where someone has walked the same route without permission or objection. We backed this up with a special insurance policy to protect our client should someone try to prevent access.

Also, the woodland’s boundaries weren’t clear on the ground. In places there were no physical features, such as fences or ditches, to make an ‘educated guess’ as to where they were.

After scrutinising of the deeds, and neighbouring titles, we worked out where the boundaries were. We took photographs and paced out the edges to judge the location of the legal boundaries by referring to the Land Registry plans.

Where land is not registered at the Land Registry, it is called ‘unregistered land’. To become registered, the title deeds must be sent to the Land Registry for registering so that it can extract the relevant information for its records.

Relevant information includes the owner, the extent of the land, what rights the land has and if there are any restrictions about its use. Land Registry officials put all this in a single certificate that can be viewed on-line or posted to you. 

Where the deeds are lost it can be a struggle to get such a certificate. Where the land is unregistered and has been occupied for more than 12 years by regular use, it may be possible to claim ‘possessory title’ which means that the Land Registry can be asked for a special ownership certificate saying that the land had been in the applicant’s possession.

While it is always a risk that someone could, theoretically, turn up with the deeds and say ‘get off my land’, was this really likely after more than 12 years? It was a small risk and common sense could prevail.

While the woodland title didn’t exclude shooting rights, the woods were criss-crossed with public footpaths. This didn’t prevent shooting, but our client needed advice to ensure public safety.

This meant putting up notices when shoots were planned, posting lookouts at both ends of the ‘shooting line’ and sounding horns to warn the shooting party of approaching walkers and to ‘down guns.’

On top of this, on one side of the woods, the boundary is a river. The deeds excluded fishing rights decades ago and, after some research, we found that a local fishing club had them.

Now the client knew he wasn’t getting these rights, but still wanted to buy the woodland. While the shoot wouldn’t go as far as the river bank, as a courtesy, the club could be informed when there were shooting parties.

The title deeds contained restrictive covenants stating what could not be done with the woodland but none affected the client’s plans, which may have had to be abandoned if they had. 

While this case was unusual for the number of matters it presented, it illustrates the complex issues which need considering when acquiring land, in line with proper legal advice.

So, to my question, ‘how complicated could it be?’ the answer is ‘very’, which is remarkable for a quiet corner of Yorkshire.

The lesson is that landowners, buyers and their advisers must assume nothing, decide what is relevant, apply the law to the facts and, most of all, get good advice and, even better, act on it.

Stephen Proctor's article was published in Northern Farmer in mid 2019