How Can I Purchase Unregistered Land?
QThe back garden of a house I’ve bought to develop sides onto a road adopted as public highway, which leads into the access road to the train station opposite. Between the garden and the highway is an unregistered, unadopted piece of land. Network Rail has sent me drawings to show where it believes its land extends to (seeing as its land is also unregistered). This suggests that there would be a gap of somewhere between 4.5m and 5.2m across, which I could gain access to without encroaching on Network Rail land. I am currently trying to establish the owner of the unregistered slice of land so that I can make contact with them in the hope of getting permission to cross it at the very least, if not to purchase the land outright. What is the best way of going about this? Guy Mathers
AMichael Ho lmes SA YS: Have you made an official search of the highway records to see if the land you need to cross is highways land even though it is not metalled? If council records confirm that the land is highway, you require only planning permission and highways consent to form a new entrance onto the highway.
If you cannot identify the owner of the land you can still apply to form a new access onto the highway and see if an owner comes forward to object. Once you have consent you can approach a solicitor and enquire about Absence of Easement insurance which could be put in place to protect you against claims should someone come forward in the future and contest your right to access your property by this route (we assume there is currently no access and this has therefore not been in historic use as an access). The solicitor and insurer would usually research the history of the title and how and when that small parcel was
subdivided and assess the likelihood of a legal owner coming forward.
Once you have established an access and insured it, you could make an application for development of the land. If this is successful, you can take out a new indemnity policy to protect the development against the risk of an owner emerging and objecting to the easement. If after 20 years of uninterrupted use no one has come forward to object, the easement is established by prescription and becomes lawful. Making further attempts to contact the owner now would make it difficult to get Absence of Easement insurance. Negotiate with Network Rail for an easement, and as you have an alternative access its ability to ransom is reduced.