BOUNDARY
PROBLEMS

Adjudication
Adjudicator to Land Registry
Administrative Boundary
ADR
Adverse Possession
Agreed Boundary
Alternative Disputes Resolution
Boundary
Boundary Agreement
Boundary Wall
Case Law
Charge
Common Boundary
Conveyance Deed
County Court
Deed
Deed of Extinguishment
Deed of Grant

Deed of Variation
Deed Plan
Design Plan
Determined Boundary
Dimensions found in deeds
Dominant Tenement
Duty of Care
Easement
Estoppel
Expert Witness
Extrinsic Evidence
Field Number
General Boundary
Generalisation of map detail
H-mark
High Court
Indenture of Conveyance
Land Registry

Legal Boundary by Paper Title
Legal Expenses Insurance
Legal Precedent
Legal Presumption
Measured Land Survey
Mediation
Mereing, admin've boundaries
Official Copy
Ordnance Survey
Paper Title Boundary
Parcel Number
Parcels Clause
Party Fence Wall
Party Wall
Physical Boundary
Possessory Title
Predecessor in Title
Pre-registration title deeds

Professional Opinion
Property Sellers Info' Form
Public Boundary
Register and Plan
Register Entry
Retaining Wall
Riparian
Servient Tenement
Site Survey
Statutory Declaration
Successor in Title
T-mark
Title
Title Deed
Title Plan
Transfer Deed
Transfer Plan
Witness Statement

Adjudication

According to Wikipedia:

See also ADR - Adjudication and arbitration

Adjudicator to Land Registry

The Adjudicator to Land Registry is a court within the Tribunals Service of the Ministry of Justice. In spite of its name, it is completely independent of Land Registry: but Land Registry describes itself as a non-ministerial government department reporting to the Lord Chancellor, and the Lord Chancellor is also the Secretary of State for Justice, which raises questions as to the independence of the Adjudicator to Land Registry from its near namesake, Her Majesty's Land Registry.

According to the website of Adjudicator to HM Land Registry:

Administrative Boundary

There appears to be no official definition of the term Administrative Boundary. The Local Government Boundary Commission for England has a Glossary on its web site that fails to include an entry for Administrative Boundaries.

Wikipedia tells us "The Boundary Committee for England was a statutory committee of the Electoral Commission, an independent body set up by the UK Parliament. The Committee’s aim was to conduct thorough, consultative and robust reviews of local government areas in England, and for its recommendations to be evidence-based, accurate and accepted. The Boundary Committee was abolished in 2010, with its functions assumed by a new Local Government Boundary Commission for England.

The Committee’s responsibilities related solely to local government boundaries: responsibility for parliamentary boundaries lies with the Boundary Commission, a non-departmental public body of the Ministry of Justice."

J B Harley (in his book "Ordnance Survey Maps: a descriptive manual", Ordnance Survey, Southampton, 1975) explains: "It is Ordnance Survey policy to show administrative boundaries, but not private or property boundaries, on its maps. This is a statutory requirement ... dating back to the Ordnance Survey Act of 1841, which provided for the survey and mapping of contemporary boundaries, ranging from counties down to extra-parochial districts ... Subsequent legislation has resulted in changes ... in the range of boundaries depicted ... Parliamentary Constituencies are normally defined by local government areas and are also required to be published.

Administrative boundaries are sometimes referred to as 'public boundaries' in order to differentiate them from property (ie. private) boundaries.

See also Administrative Boundaries and Property Boundaries

Adverse Possession

According to Wikipedia:

Wikipedia briefly explains the operation of adverse possession in England and Wales.

See also the Boundary-Problems explanation.

Agreed Boundary

An agreed boundary is a boundary whose position has been agreed by the owners of the land to either side of their common boundary in an agreement whose purpose is to clarify the description of the boundary as it was written or as it was mapped in the original conveyance or transfer deed.

Alternative Disputes Resolution

According to the law firm Herbert Smith LLP:

Boundary

The word boundary has no special meaning in law. Thus we must accept a standard dictionary definition, such as:

• boundary, n. Limit-line [The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 3rd edition, 1934, Oxford University Press, London]
• boundary, n. line dividing a country, estate, sphere of action or thought &c., from another, sea or river or hedge or the like doing this [The Pocket Oxford Dictionary, 4th edition revised 1946, Oxford University Press, London]
• boundary, n a limit; a border; termination, final linit [The Chambers Dictionary, 3rd edition, 1998, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh]

See also: Agreed Boundary,    Common Boundary,    Determined Boundary,    General Boundary,    Legal Boundary by Paper Title,    Physical Boundary.

Boundary Agreement

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Case Law

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Charge

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Common Boundary

The common boundary between your land and the land belonging to one of your neighbours is simply that section of your own boundary which also serves as a section of the boundary of your neighbour's land. There is no special meaning in law attaching to the term common boundary.

Conveyance Deed

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County Court

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Deed

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Deed of Grant

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Deed of Variation

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Deed Plan

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Design Plan

Also known as a developer's plan, or in other contexts an architects's drawing or a planning drawing, a design plan (or design drawing) is intended as a communication between an architect and a builder to specify what should be built and where.

In the second half of the twentieth century it was a very common practice to re-use these design plans as conveyance plans. If everything had been built as specified and, more importantly, where specified by the architect then there was unlikely to be any unforfeseen outcome. All too often, and for a wide variety of reasons, not everything was built according to the design plan and the inevitable result was a conveyance plan (or a transfer plan) that was misleading as to the boundaries of the land being conveyed.

Determined Boundary

The term determined boundary arises out of Section 60 of the Land Registration Act 2002, which neither uses nor defines the term itself.

Section 60 of LRA 2002 is quoted on the Statute Law for Boundaries page of the present web site. Section 60 (3) says: "Rules may make provision enabling or requiring the exact line of the boundary of a registered estate to be determined".

Boundaries, and especially determined boundaries, are dealt with under Rules 117 to 123 of The Land Registration Rules 20003, and Rule 119 is amended by Schedule 1 to the The Land Registration (Amendment) Rules 2008.

The Boundary-Problems web site offers its own determined boundary definition on another page.

Further information can be found at paragraph 8 of Land Registry Public Guide 19: Title plans and boundaries and at Section 3 of Land Registry Practice Guide 40: Land Registry plans

Dimensions found on deeds

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Dominant Tenement

The dominant tenement is the land that benefits from an easement that burdens neighbouring land.

Sometimes, for convenience and brevity, the term dominant tenement is used to refer to the owner of the land that forms the dominant tenement. As the easement 'runs with the land' and must be passed upon sale of the land from the vendor to his successor in title, such use of the term is potentially misleading

See also Rights over Neighbouring Land

Duty of Care

According to Wikipedia:

Easement

An easement is a right benefiting one parcel of land (known as the dominant tenement) that permits the rightful users (not necessarily solely the owner) of that land to perform specified actions over a neighbouring parcel of land (known as the servient tenement).

See also Rights over Neighbouring Land

Estoppel

According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary:

Expert Witness

According to HM Courts Service:

An expert is a person who has been instructed to give or prepare expert evidence for the purpose of court proceedings. An expert has a duty to help the court on matters within their area of expertise. Experts exist in diverse fields so there is no single professional or regulatory body for those who act as experts or expert witnesses.

The Civil Procedure Rules, Part 35 (governing the work of expert witnesses) requires that an expert witness' duty to assist the court on matters within his expertise overrides any obligation to the person from whom he has received instructions or by whom he is paid. So be warned that it is not the expert's job to make a better case for you than the evidence supports.

Extrinsic Evidence

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Field Number

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General Boundary

A general boundary might be defined as a boundary whose position has not been ascertained to the nearest inch (see the last paragraph on page 585 of the article Great Oaks from Little Acorns ...).

The definition given at Section 60 of the Land Registration Act 2002 is no more enlightening:

(2) A general boundary does not determine the exact line of the boundary.

Generalisation of map detail

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H-mark

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High Court

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Indenture of Conveyance

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Land Registry

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Legal Boundary by Paper Title

ref LR Practice Guide 40

Legal Expenses Insurance

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Legal Precedent

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Legal Presumption

A legal presumption is a device used in the courts as a means of filling any gaps left in the evidence. A legal presumption may be rebutted by contrary evidence in a particular case. Legal presumptions should not therefore be accepted as true in every single case.

For a list of the presumptions that commonly apply in boundary disputes refer to the Legal Presumptions and boundaries page.

Measured Land Survey

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Mediation

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Mereing, administrative boundaries

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Official Copy

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Ordnance Survey

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Paper Title Boundary

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Parcels Clause

In this context a parcel is a small piece of land. The parcels clause is that part of a conveyance in which the parcel is described with reference to its boundaries and its local extent.

Parcel Number

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Party Fence Wall

According to the Party Wall Etc. Act 1996
party fence wall means a wall (not being part of a building) which stands on lands of different owners and is used or constructed to be used for separating such adjoining lands, but does not include a wall constructed on the land of one owner the artificially formed support of which projects into the land of another owner;

Party Wall

According to the Party Wall Etc. Act 1996
party wall means—
(a) a wall which forms part of a building and stands on lands of different owners to a greater extent than the projection of any artificially formed support on which the wall rests; and
(b) so much of a wall not being a wall referred to in paragraph (a) above as separates buildings belonging to different owners;

Physical Boundary

A physical boundary is usually a physical feature that acts as a barrier between two parcels of land in separate ownership, and such a physical barrier may or may not be located along the legal boundary. Examples of such physical barriers include fences, walls, banks, ditches, hedges, the bank of a river, etc.

Sometimes a physical feature that is incapable of providing an effective barrier is put in place on or near a boundary as a marker and may thus be referred to as a physical boundary.

It should never be assumed that a physical boundary actually stands in the same position as the legal boundary that it purports to represent. There are many reasons why a physical boundary might be emplaced at a remove from the legal boundary, and the most obvious example is a hedge grown close to but not upon the legal boundary of a parcel of residential land.

Possessory Title

The ownership of land without the usually necessary title deeds to prove ownership.

See also Legal Concepts affecting Boundaries - Possessory Title.

Predecessor in Title

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Pre-registration title deeds

See Title Deeds, below.

Professional Opinion

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Property Sellers Information Form

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Public Boundary

See Administrative Boundary,

Register and Plan

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Register Entry

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Retaining Wall

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Riparian

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Servient Tenement

The land that is burdened with an easement that benefits neighbouring land.

See also Rights over Neighbouring Land

Site Survey

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Statutory Declaration

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Successor in Title

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T-mark

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Title

title, n. (Law) right to ownership of property with without possession [The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 3rd edition, 1934, Oxford University Press, London]

Title Deeds

Title Deeds. Deeds evidencing a person's right or title to lands. Before Land Registration, whereby title to land is recorded at HM Land Registry, title deeds provided the standard proof of title to land, and the grants of land by deed was the basic transaction in 'unregistered' conveyancing. [Penner J E, 'Mozley & Whiteley's Law Dictionary, 12th Edition, Butterworths, London, 2001]

The title deeds were generally held by the mortgage lender as security against the money loaned to the property's owner.

Usually, the 'title deeds' comprised a bundle of documents relating to the property, not all of which could strictly be described as title deeds. As well as the conveyance and any other deeds, the bundle would typically contain Abstracts of Title, the results of Land Searches and Land Charges Searches, Sellers Property Information Forms, even planning drawings and guarantees for building works.

In the case of registered land, such old title deeds are often referred to as the 'pre-registration title deeds'. Owners of registered land would be wise to retain these pre-registration title deeds as they may contain useful, sometimes definitive, information about the property that Land Registry has not seen fit to record on the title register.

Title Plan

A title plan is a map on which Land Registry indicates the general extent of the land in a particular title, usually by adopting existing lines on the Ordnance Survey map to indicate the general boundaries of the land in the title. Sometimes, if the boundary runs across an area of white space on the Ordnance Survey map then Land Registry will add a dashed line to show the position of the general boundary. Sometimes, in cases where a newly built property is being registered for the first time and the development has not yet appeared on Ordnance Survey maps, Land Registry will base its title plan on a map provided by the developer (see also Design Plan).

The general boundary is the black line on tghe base (usually Ordnance Survey) map alongside which Land Registry has applied its red edging: the red edging does not itself represent the position of the general boundary.

Rather strangely, a search of the Land Registry web site fails to reveal a concise definition of the term title plan. The following references give useful background reading:
Land Registry Knowledge Base: How is ownership of boundaries defined?
Joint Statement by Land Registry and Ordnance Survey
Land Registry Public Guide 19: Title plans and boundaries
Land Registry Practice Guide 40: Land Registry plans

Transfer Deed

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Transfer Plan

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Witness Statement

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