Adverse posession

[Littletreefrog]

So the house we are trying to buy seems to have pinched a bit of the grass verge from the council to make their garden a bit bigger. It has apparently been like that since the 90s and never mentioned. Seems to have come to light when our solicitor looked at the boundary as it should be per the land registry.

The seller is refusing to attempt to register the land. Seems if we attempt to do it after purchase either it will be fine and just be registered as part of the property or the council could object meaning either we attempt to buy the land off them or we have to pay to put the boundary back in the right place (not a simple job as its a retaining wall with fence on top.)

Anyone any experience of anything like this? I've no idea how to proceed.

What would happen if you do nothing? Simply leave everything as it is and don't try to change the legal status?

This is an option I think. I think the only issue we would then have is if the council suddenly decided they wanted it back (unlikely) or we come to sell in the future and it affects the price we can get as the issue will come up again.

We had a sort of similar issue. We had the sellers sign a declaration that they had used the land continuously since year X and never been challenged on the use of it - to support a claim for adverse possession if we ever needed to make one. So far we have not.