In fact, the boundary was wrong and the council owned the land. But, the home owner would have an arguable defence if the council sought a mandatory injunction for the removal of the garage (either proprietory estoppel because of delay, or because damages would be an inadequate remedy).

The council did not apply for a mandatory injunction but instead applied to the registrar for alteration of the boundaries. It argued that whether or not the garage was likely to be removed was irrelevant to the legal question of whether the register should be altered to reflect the correct boundary line. However, the LR adjudicator refused to alter the register, on the basis that there were ‘exceptional circumstances’. The High Court agreed, taking the point that altering the boundary by itself would achieve nothing – there was no point in altering the register because it would not make the plan more accurate. The real question was whether, in practice, the council would ever be able to recover the disputed strip. Given the difficulty of doing that, it was not appropriate to alter the register.

Clearly, this is an unusual case. Perhaps the real lesson for practitioners is not to solely rely upon an application to the LR for alteration of the register; it may well also be prudent to make an application to the court. See commentary on Derbyshire CC v Fallon [2007] EWHC 1326 (Ch) in [2007] SJ 1052.