How can neighbours register unregistered land with shared rights of way?

[Madam7172]

Hello- I’m looking for advice on the best way for myself and my neighbours to register some unregistered land that we all have rights of way over- do we need to set up a management company? And if so, how do we do that please?

Who owns the land? Are you intending to claim "adverse possession" - I'm not sure you can as a group, a company could, but would need to have occupied the land for 12 years. This may help https://www.clarkewillmott.com/news/adverse-possession-and-rights-of-way-the-search-for-an-unequivocal-act/

I'd be keen to know the answer to this. My house has right of way over unregistered land and even solicitors don't seem to know what to do. It's shared by 12 properties and has been in use for 126 years. Everyone who buys ends up with an indemnity policy.

I don’t believe anybody owns it, and the owners of my house and my neighbours have used it for 115 years to access the rear of our houses- my deeds show I have a right of access over it and we use it for both pedestrian and vehicular access

The fact that you have "right of access over it" means somebody (unknown?) does own it. You have to create "an unequivocal act" like enclosure, putting signs up to say it is private property and wait for 12 years before you can claim adverse possession. The chances are one of your neighbours owns it, probably the one furthest from the access point, they may no longer use it for access but that doesn't affect their ownership. The legal firms that deal with this sort of problem are (justifiably) expensive and not the usual High St ones that do conveyancing, wills and divorces. You have access over, what will you gain by ownership, other than a reduced bank balance?

You need to already own it in order to register ownership of it.

So you would need to have deeds and documents that prove it is already your land.

The fact that it is currently unregistered and you have no idea who the actual owner is does not mean that nobody owns it. At some point in history somebody obviously owned it (as your property was granted rights over it) so now their heirs or whoever bought it from them (or their heirs etc) will own it. If the owner died leaving no heirs then it would belong to the Crown.

So you could take steps to work out who actually owns it - the research for this is specialist and likely to be expensive. And then you’d need to buy it from them.

Or you could put up a fence and “private property” signs around it, take timestamped photographs regularly to prove you’ve done that, wait 12 years, and then apply to register it on the basis of adverse possession.

Thank you- that makes total sense- more research needed- fortunately I think we have a lot of old documents to sift through- and potentially a lot of money saved so thank you so much