"Like making sure the purchaser confirms that they are aware of the plot bundaries and the plot on the title matches the one they think they are buying."
There was a whole big case on this reported just recently. It ended up going to the Court of Appeal over a bit of land that was about 4 metres wide.
All because the purchaser didn't notice that the boundary on the title plan didn't match up with reality on the ground. This from The Times, with a share token
https://www.thetimes.com/article/f3a6f309-b43f-4dc6-8289-d9f7172845cc?shareToken=2970197621aa94d17bc528f46dbdb45b
Neighbours run up £300,000 bill in fight over garden brook
After a trial and two appeals, the dispute over a narrow stream in Leicestershire has been settled in favour of ‘squatters’ rights’
A village brook can create the quintessential image of Englishness, but in Leicestershire it has been the focus of a £300,000 legal row between a potter and his neighbours.
Court of Appeal judges heard that David Wright requires “slow, quiet, rhythmic … time for contemplation” to create ceramics using a Japanese-influenced technique in his garden studio in the village of Thrussington.
The potter complained that his peace was shattered in 2020 when Dee Narga, an NHS administrator and part-time painter, paid £265,000 for a former piggery behind his cottage home — known as Brook Barn — and obtained planning permission to convert it into a large house.
Narga claimed that a 1.2-metre-wide brook that runs between the two properties was part of her land — but Wright countered that the waterway was in his garden and that his children had paddled in it.
Nonetheless, Narga tore down an existing fence on her side of the water and erected a new barrier along the other bank on ground that Wright and his wife said formed part of their garden.
The couple also argued that Narga had impinged on the property of their neighbours, Amanda Clapham, a physiotherapist, and her husband, Tony.
Narga’s actions prompted “heated discussions” between the neighbours and ultimately a “bitter” court dispute over ownership of the stream.
Three appeal judges — Lord Justice Peter Jackson, Lord Justice Newey and Lord Justice Nugee — have now come down on the side of the Wrights and Claphams, ruling that their “peaceful” adverse possession of the brook and land on both its banks trumped Narga’s “mere paper” entitlement.
In his lead judgment, Jackson criticised the £300,000 in legal costs incurred in the dispute over the tiny waterway, saying that litigation could have been avoided had Narga talked to her neighbours before buying Brook Barn.
During the course of a trial and two appeals, judges heard that Thrussington — a small village that originated as a Viking settlement and is mentioned in the Domesday Book — sits on the western side of the River Wreake, between Leicester and Melton Mowbray.
The brook at the centre of the legal battle rises near the ancient medieval ruins of Thrussington Grange monastery and passes between the backs of the litigants’ gardens before emptying into the River Wreake.
Various court hearings were told that Narga bought Brook Barn in 2020 and that the Wrights and the Claphams had treated the brook and both its banks as part of their gardens “for decades”.
Narga was found to be the owner of the stream in two previous court rulings, despite a judge finding that her neighbours had established “squatters’ rights” over the brook and the unclaimed land immediately north and south of it.
However that judge also ruled that as the two couples had not registered their adverse possession of the land and their use of it was not “obvious,” their claims were superseded by Narga’s once her property was registered.
However, the Court of Appeal overturned that ruling, with Nugee in his ruling finding that the brook and its banks had been effectively removed from the title of Brook Barn by the two couples establishing squatters’ rights long before its title was first registered in 2003.
“The upshot,” said the judge, was that Narga “has no registered title to the disputed land”. The judge added: “She has no other claim to it and there is therefore nothing to displace the possessory title that the Wrights and the Claphams had acquired by 2003, and still have today, to the disputed land.”
The costs each side will have to pay for the dispute will be decided at another hearing at a later date.