
At the boundaries of permissible & impermissible boundary determinations. Toby Boncey reports
In Murdoch v Amesbury [2016] UKUT 3 (TCC), His Honour Judge Dight, sitting in the Upper Tribunal, held that the First-tier Tribunal (FTT) had exceeded its jurisdiction by determining the line of a boundary. The FTT had already dismissed the applicants’ application for determination of the exact line of the boundary under s 60(3) of the Land Registration Act 2002 (LRA 2002) because the plan submitted was not within the required tolerance for a determined boundary plan (10mm). Having decided that the plan was inaccurate and the application to determine the boundary should be rejected, the FTT had no jurisdiction to go on to decide where the boundary did lie.
HHJ Dight noted that the FTT had no inherent jurisdiction, so the question was one of statutory construction. Section 60(3) itself merely provides for rules to be made, but HHJ Dight held that the section “properly construed, relates to the registration of plans which show the parcels, and boundaries, of the related registered titles…the purpose of s 60(3) is to prevent potential disputes between adjoining