The High Court has considered the effect, on a claim for adverse possession of registered land, of section 144 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, which makes it a criminal offence to trespass by “living” in a residential building.
The court held that in enacting section 144, Parliament had assumed that adverse possession could be founded on acts of criminal trespass and did not intend adverse possession (of either registered or unregistered land) to be precluded by the fact that the adverse possession was based on criminal trespass.
Best v The Chief Land Registrar and another [2014] EWHC 1370 (Admin).