Small parcels of land are easy to overlook and hard to recover. The case of Dobson v Unsted [2026] is a timely reminder of both propositions. The Upper Tribunal (UT) held that routine garden maintenance – mowing, raking, replacing topsoil, letting children play – carried out consistently over more than a decade was sufficient to establish adverse possession of a strip of land, even where no fence was erected and no formal claim was made.
The disputed triangle
The properties at No. 27 and No. 29 Pointers Hill, Westcott, were carved out of a single plot in 1994. Their drives join at the front, and in the junction sits the disputed land: a triangle measuring roughly one metre by two metres, technically part of No. 27’s registered title. For the best part of thirty years, the occupants of No. 27 (successive owners and a string of tenants) did precisely nothing with it. The occupants of No. 29, meanwhile, mowed it, raked it, scarified it, replaced topsoil, let their children play on it, and eventually put a house number sign on it.
In 2022, the new owners took a different view of the boundary. In May 2023, they removed the plants No. 29 had planted, installing a garden gnome in their place by way of an act of repossession. Boundary warfare ensued.
What the Tribunals decided
The FTT found adverse possession only from 2018, when the applicants (No. 29) had transformed the strip into a planted flower bed. Prior to that, it characterised the maintenance activities as no more than “tidy and neighbourly“, insufficient, in an open-plan development, to cross the threshold to establish adverse possession. Since 2018 to the date of the application fell short of the ten years required under Schedule 6 of the LRA 2002, the application failed.
The UT allowed, and then upheld, 29’s appeal, affirming that the applicants (No. 29) and their predecessors had been in adverse possession since at least 2002, ordering the application to proceed as though the respondents’ (No. 27) objection had never been made. The garden gnome, in legal terms at least, was evicted.
The law: nature of land determines the required acts
The legal framework is well-established. Adverse possession requires factual possession (a sufficient degree of exclusive physical custody and control) coupled with the intention to possess (which must be apparent from the acts themselves). The test – Powell v McFarlane [1977] and JA Pye (Oxford) Ltd v Graham [2002] – is whether the applicant has been dealing with the land as an occupying owner might be expected to, and that no-one else has been doing so.
What Dobson usefully articulates is the application of that test to open residential land laid to lawn.
The principle – that the nature of the land determines what acts will suffice – is not new. It was applied to uncultivable marshland in Red House Farms v Catchpole [1977], where seasonal wildfowling was held sufficient because it was the only practical use of the land, and to rough scrub at the end of a garden in Hounslow LBC v Minchinton [1997], where maintaining a compost heap and some weeding was almost deemed sufficient to satisfy adverse possession. Dobson extends that reasoning to a different, but equally mundane, context: a small patch of urban lawn in a street of open-plan front gardens.
The UT drew the obvious inference: in such a setting, mowing and routine maintenance is precisely what an owner would do. Requiring a fence, a wall, or a change of use as the price of establishing possession would be to require something inconsistent with the character of the land and the neighbourhood. Simply, the FTT had set the bar too high.
The cumulative acts error
In addition, and perhaps the more significant error identified by the UT (and the one with broader practical relevance) was the FTT’s analytical approach: by treating each act of maintenance individually and finding it insufficient in isolation, the FTT missed the point. The question is not whether any single activity amounts to possession; it is whether the totality of the conduct, assessed over time and in context, paints the picture of an occupying owner.
Mowing alone might be equivocal. A house number sign, standing alone, is ambiguous. Children playing on grass near a shared drive could be consistent with many things. But mowing, raking, scarifying, topsoil replacement, play, wheelbarrow access, planting, and a house number sign – in this case sustained from 2002 across successive owners of No. 29, with no competing acts from anyone at No. 27 (whose successive tenants consistently understood the strip to be part of No. 29’s garden) – that is a different proposition entirely.
As Judge Cooke observed: “People do not generally mow their neighbours’ grass without their agreement. Nor do they let their children play on it. Nor do they replace topsoil on it or plant herbs in it.” Taken together, the cumulative effect of those acts was, in her view, unambiguous.
The absence of competing possession
One aspect of the decision deserves particular emphasis: the complete absence of any acts by No. 27’s owners was not merely a neutral fact, it was a positive feature of No. 29’s case. The former owner of No.27, Mrs Chilton, gave evidence that she had not even been aware the disputed land existed. Successive tenants, several of whom also gave evidence, confirmed that they had always treated the strip as belonging to No. 29. One tenant replaced a damaged house number sign on the disputed land, understanding it to belong to the neighbours. The gardener for No. 27 mowed only his employer’s side of the drive; the mowing stripes in a 2012 photograph that stopped precisely at the boundary.
This underscores a point sometimes overlooked: adverse possession is a comparative exercise. The question is not only what the party claiming adverse possession has done, but what the paper title owner has or has not done. Where both conditions are satisfied – sustained activity by the applicant, and prolonged inactivity or indifference by the owner – the case for adverse possession is materially strengthened.
Practical implications
Dobson v Unsted is a useful reminder of several things for property owners:
- Boundary strips and marginal land warrant attention even when they appear to be of no practical value. The disputed triangle here was less than three square metres. Its significance to the parties was evidently out of proportion to its size, but the legal principle applies equally to larger strips on development sites or rural land, where value may materialise later in ways not apparent at the time of original ownership.
- Routine maintenance by a neighbour is not always innocent. If a neighbouring occupier is consistently treating a strip as part of their garden (mowing, planting, using it) and nothing is being done on the paper owner’s side, the limitation clock may already be running. The remedy is not to match the neighbour act for act, but to make clear and documented use of the land, or to communicate clearly that the use is understood to be permissive rather than possessory.
- Perhaps most importantly for applicants, evidence preparation in adverse possession cases must capture the full picture. Witness statements that set out a single category of activity – “I mowed the land” – will invite the Tribunal to dismiss each act in isolation. The evidence should reconstruct the cumulative narrative: what was done, when, how often, by whom, and, crucially, what the other side was not doing. Former tenants, estate agent particulars, planning application location plans, and photographs can all contribute to that picture.
As for the garden gnome: a novel form of boundary marker, but an ineffective one. By May 2023, when it was deployed, over twenty years of quiet and consistent occupation had already done their work.
B P Collins’ specialist property disputes team acts for both applicants and registered owners in adverse possession claims, from initial advice on the strength of a position through to contested applications before the Tribunal and proceedings in the civil courts.
The property disputes team wants to get to the heart of the issue, understanding the objective and managing the process to analyse the risks and achieve a resolution as swiftly, efficiently and as cost effectively as possible. The team’s ethos is simple: solve the problem.
To get in touch to see how the team can help, please email enquiries@bpcollins.co.uk or call 01753 889995.
