A dispute regarding the position of a boundary between two properties located just off the M40 at High Wycombe, has produced a High Court judgment with practical lessons that extend well beyond hotels and drainage plans. Sir Anthony Mann dismissed an appeal in Handy Cross Dev Co Ltd v Vanni Properties Ltd [2026] against a County Court decision, confirming: how courts approach the use of plans in transfers; the weight to be given to post-transfer evidence; and the important distinction between a local authority acting as landowner and the same authority acting as planning authority. B P Collins’ property disputes team explores the case in more detail.
The background
Handy Cross Dev Co Ltd acquired a plot of land from Wycombe District Council (now Buckinghamshire Council) in December 2018 and built a ‘Hampton by Hilton’ hotel on it. The neighbouring plot to the west was acquired by Vanni Properties Ltd a year later, also from the council. When Handy Cross constructed its north-south access road running along the western boundary, a dispute arose: had it built part of the road on Vanni’s land?
The transfer plan was, as Sir Anthony Mann tactfully put it, “unhelpful” – the lines were too thick, the scale too small, and the detail too sparse to fix the boundary with any precision. Two other plans became central to the dispute: 1) a Drainage Plan annexed to the transfer for the purpose of identifying drainage infrastructure, which showed a clear boundary line; and 2) an April 2019 planning permission drawing submitted by Handy Cross as part of a subsequent planning application, which showed the boundary fractionally further west. The difference between the two positions amounted to only a few feet, but it was enough to put part of the access road on the wrong side of the boundary.
The County Court found in favour of Vanni, fixing the boundary using the Drainage Plan line. Handy Cross appealed on the basis that the Drainage Plan should not have been used at all, and that the April 2019 plan was the better evidence of the parties’ intentions. The High Court dismissed the appeal.
Lesson 1: a plan with a different purpose can still fix a boundary
Handy Cross’s first argument was that the Drainage Plan should have been excluded entirely. It was annexed to the transfer to identify drainage infrastructure, not to delineate the boundary. It carried a prominent “do not scale this drawing” warning. It was the wrong shape in places. And, it had been formally replaced by a new plan in a subsequent deed of variation.
The court rejected all those objections. Where a transfer plan is too imprecise to fix a boundary, the court is entitled to look at all the documents forming part of the transaction. A plan annexed for a different purpose is not automatically excluded from that exercise: its primary purpose is relevant to the weight given to it but, is not a reason to ignore it altogether. Where it provides a clearer picture of the boundary than the main transfer plan, it is legitimate material.
The “do not scale” classification was similarly dismissed. Such warnings are a common feature of construction and drainage plans. They are aimed at engineers carrying out physical works, not at lawyers or courts seeking to understand the parties’ intentions. A warning against scaling does not strip a plan of all evidential value when used to resolve ambiguity.
The practical lesson is clear: when a boundary dispute arises and the main transfer plan is ambiguous, any document incorporated into the transfer (whatever its stated purpose) is potentially in play as evidence of what the parties intended.
Lesson 2: replacing a plan for one purpose does not erase its prior evidential value
In December 2019, Handy Cross and the council entered into a deed of variation which formally replaced the Drainage Plan with an updated version to reflect the relocation of an attenuation tank. Handy Cross argued that this substitution had removed the 2018 Drainage Plan from the record entirely: anyone inspecting the title at HM Land Registry would find the replacement plan, whose dashed red boundary line was no longer labelled as a boundary indicator, having lost its key in the process of reproduction.
The court was unpersuaded. The boundary failed? to be determined as at the date of the original transfer in December 2018. The question is what the parties agreed at that time, not what documents appear on the register years later. A deed of variation entered into for the purpose of relocating a drainage tank does not, on its true construction, retroactively alter the evidential value of the original plan in establishing where the parties intended the boundary to run. The 2018 Drainage Plan remained available as a guide to the position of the boundary as at the date it was granted.
Lesson 3: post-transfer evidence must be bilateral to carry weight
The law permits subsequent events to inform the interpretation of a transfer where the original document is unclear or ambiguous, but only if those events are probative of the intention of both parties at the time of the transfer. A unilateral act by one party cannot establish what both parties agreed.
This proved fatal to Handy Cross’s reliance on the April 2019 planning permission drawing. That plan was submitted by Handy Cross alone as part of its own planning application. It emerged as a plan in accordance with which planning permission was subsequently granted. However, the council was acting in its capacity as planning authority when it granted that permission, not in its capacity as landowner and vendor. The two functions are legally distinct. The grant of planning permission wearing a planning hat is not the same as an agreement about the boundary wearing a property-owning hat.
Handy Cross attempted to argue that the council must have anticipated the planning application and therefore implicitly adopted the plan as a bilateral agreement about the boundary. The court found that even if the council knew a new planning application was coming, it had no reason to suppose that the precise western boundary would be an issue in that process, and there was no evidence that it was. The plan remained a unilateral act and could not fix the boundary.
Lesson 4: a local authority wears two hats – and they are not interchangeable
The fourth lesson runs through all the above and deserves particular attention for anyone involved in transactions where a local authority is both the selling landowner and the relevant planning authority. Those two capacities are legally separate and should be treated as such.
In this case, the purchase agreement made that explicit: it contained provisions stating that nothing in the contract affected the council’s exercise of its planning functions, and that consents given in one capacity were not to be treated as given in the other. Sir Anthony Mann confirmed that this reflected the general legal position, as recognised in Maximus Networks Ltd v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2018], and that the express contractual provisions in this case made the separation of the two capacities even clearer. The consequence is that something done by the council as a planning authority (including granting planning permission on a plan submitted by the developer) cannot be attributed to the council as vendor agreeing to a change in the boundary it had sold.
This has wider implications than boundary disputes alone. Any party to a development transaction where the relevant planning authority is also the landowner should ensure that important matters ] such as boundaries, access rights, restrictive covenants, consents, are agreed in writing with the council acting explicitly in its capacity as landowner, and not assumed to be covered by the planning authority’s involvement in the planning process.
Get in touch
Our Property Disputes Team advises on all aspects of boundary disputes. If you have a boundary issue with a neighbour, we can help you understand your position and take the right steps to resolve it. Call us on 01753 889995 or email enquiries@bpcollins.co.uk.
The team’s ethos is simple: solve the problem.
