[2024] UKUT 217 (LC)

The Judge granted permission to appeal on two grounds. I subsequently granted permission for a third ground on paper and refused permission for a fourth at the hearing of the appeal.

Under the first ground it is said that the Judge was wrong in law to dismiss the claim under the Prescription Act 1832 simply because the use of the claimed route had ceased on 27 September 2020, and had not continued until the commencement of the proceedings in December 2020. The Judge refused permission for an appeal on this ground saying that the claim under the Act added nothing to the claim based on lost modern grant. Mr Sagier also challenges that suggestion, and permission for this ground was granted by this Tribunal.

Under the second ground of appeal it is said that the Judge was wrong about the significance of the single incident of oral protest he had found to have occurred involving Mrs Kaur’s husband and Mr Sagier. Neither Mrs Kaur nor the Judge had said when this incident took place, but Mr Sagier’s evidence had been that he had had two amicable conversations with Mrs Kaur’s husband at different times but that there had been a single altercation at the end of September 2020 after the picket fence had been erected. By that stage there had already been more than 20 years use of the route, so the incident was irrelevant as far as the claim based on lost modern grant was concerned. It was also a consequence of the same interruption of use within a few months of the commencement of proceedings and section 4 of the Act required that it be disregarded for the purpose of the statutory claim.

The third ground of appeal concerns signage. It is said that the signs relied on were addressed to the public at large and were not intended, nor were they sufficient, to convey to the owners of houses on the private road that their neighbours objected to their use of the claimed route to walk up and down their own street.

The Judge refused permission to appeal on a fourth ground of appeal. It was said that permission ought not to have been given on the day of the hearing for an amendment to Mrs Kaur’s case to rely on the signs. The Judge refused permission for that ground because the signs were referred to in the witness statement provided by Mr Sidhu which had been served at the same time as Mrs Kaur’s statement of case and well before the hearing. Following that refusal a further application for permission to rely on the fourth ground was made to this Tribunal. I considered that application at the commencement of the hearing but refused permission, for substantially the same reasons as had been given by the Judge.