[2025] UKUT 144 (LC)

Ground 2 has no practical effect in light of the success of ground 1. The FTT’s decision is set aside, and I shall direct the registrar to reverse the alteration made in response to the FTT’s order and to reject Mr Iwaskiewicz’s application to alter the register.

It is important to note that I have not found that that there was no mistake on the register; only that Mr Iwaskiewicz has not proved in these proceedings that the disputed land was omitted from his title by mistake and included within Mr Suhitharan’s title by mistake. He failed to prove that because he did not have enough information about the titles to the two properties. He did not look at historic copies of the register of title, which are available for inspection. He did not find out when first registration of the two properties took place. He did not even find out when registration became compulsory for Bedford. It is most unlikely that the information he provided was the limit of what could possibly be found. Proper research into the two titles might well have either provided an explanation for the state of the two titles in the form of a sale or adverse possession, or have enabled him to demonstrate that two mistakes actually happened. As it is, all that he proved was that the state of the register in 2019, and presumably when he bought in 2000, was inconsistent with the state of his title in 1946. That was nearly eighty years ago and much may have happened to change the title legitimately since then. To put the matter more generally: title to registered land depends upon registration and not on deeds, and the fact that the registered title is inconsistent with pre-registration deeds some decades old is not by itself evidence that there is a mistake on the register.