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A London homeowner has lost a four-year legal battle over a strip of land measuring just 48 centimetres after a tribunal ruled that her neighbours’ kitchen extension had acquired “squatters’ rights.
” Susannah James bought the £600,000 semi-detached house in Surbiton in 2021, but a year later claimed that part of the adjoining property’s kitchen had been built across the boundary onto her land. The First-tier Tribunal has now found in favour of neighbours Mina Sharma and Neil Deeley, who will not have to demolish the disputed section of their kitchen. The ruling was reported by The Independent and AOL. Read more details about it here:
A tiny strip, a major dispute
The homes in Cottage Grove, Surbiton, were once part of a single Victorian property before being divided into two semi-detached houses.
Both properties have single-storey kitchen extensions at the rear. While the boundary between the two kitchens follows the garden fence line, the roof line of the houses reveals that the neighbours’ kitchen “steps” across the boundary by 48 centimetres. According to the tribunal, nobody had noticed the discrepancy for around 40 years.
Thick vegetation at the rear of the properties obscured the border, and even Mrs James said, as per reports, that she did not realise when she bought her home that she might be acquiring a small part of her neighbour’s kitchen.
Mrs James, a Cambridge-educated tax company boss, and her husband and business partner Chris James asked Judge Ewan Paton to declare that the slice of the neighbours’ kitchen was trespassing on their land. They sought an order requiring it to be demolished and removed, as per reports.
Why the neighbours won
The kitchen extension is believed to have been built in the early 1980s, long before Ms Sharma and Mr Deeley purchased their home in 2012.
Evidence from a previous joint owner indicated that the extension had been in the same position since at least 2000. The judge described the evidence as “overwhelming” that the kitchen had remained in that location for well over two decades before the dispute began, it was reported.Ms Sharma and Mr Deeley did not argue that the original boundary line was different. Instead, they claimed adverse possession, commonly known as squatters’ rights, over the 48-centimetre strip.
The tribunal accepted that successive owners had physically possessed the land and reasonably believed it belonged to them because their kitchen was built on it.Judge Paton said, reported The Independent, that the construction and enjoyment of part of a house on neighbouring land was “possibly the plainest example” of factual possession combined with an intention to possess. He found that the neighbours had been in adverse possession of the strip since at least October 2000.
What the judge said
Representative image
The judge acknowledged that property boundaries are not always perfectly straight in practice. He noted that Ordnance Survey and Land Registry index maps can contain kinks, curves and steps, and that ordinary buyers cannot reasonably be expected to spot every minor discrepancy simply because a physical boundary appears slightly uneven.In comments reported by The Independent, Judge Paton said a purchaser is entitled to assume that “what they see is what they get” when buying a home whose boundaries appear as seen on the ground.
He added that it was entirely reasonable for successive owners to believe they owned everything within the walls of their property. He also said the case showed the importance of long-established physical boundaries in resolving disputes.
Because the extension had likely stood in the same place for more than 22 years before the issue was raised, the tribunal approved the neighbours’ application for adverse possession of the land.
A costly lesson for homeowners
The ruling means Mrs James and Chris James cannot force their neighbours to remove or demolish the section of kitchen that crosses the boundary. Although the disputed land is tiny, the case demonstrates how a small encroachment can become a serious legal issue when title plans, physical boundaries and long-standing structures do not align.For buyers, the case is a reminder that a property’s registered title plan may not perfectly match what exists on the ground.
Fences, extensions, garden walls and older buildings can all create small differences that remain unnoticed for decades.Boundary experts often advise buyers to check title plans carefully, commission a survey before completing a purchase, and raise concerns early if an extension, wall or fence appears to sit unusually close to a neighbour’s property. Once a structure has remained in place openly and without challenge for many years, the legal position can become far more difficult to reverse.The Surbiton case may have involved less than half a metre of land, but it ended with a clear message from the tribunal: long-established physical boundaries can carry significant legal weight, even when they differ from the line shown on paper.