[2025] UKUT 178 (LC)

As I said at paragraphs 3 and 4 above Mr Saood built and sold, on the appellant’s behalf, two detached houses, each built at the end of a street as shown on the plans above. Number 39 Gordon Place was put on the market in 2018; the estate agent’s particulars gave its postal address and described it as a three-bedroomed detached house with a paved patio and detached garden, and easy access to public transport and to Reading town centre. Plans, and photographs of the house and garden, were included in the particulars.

The respondent made an offer that was accepted and on 26 November 2018 the estate agents wrote to the appellant’s solicitor reporting that a sale of 39 Gordon Place had been arranged, enclosing a memorandum of sale, and asking him to get in touch with the purchaser’s solicitor and prepare a draft contract. On 30 November 2018 Neale Turk LLP wrote to the respondent’s solicitor under the heading “39 Gordon Place, Reading” with a draft contract for approval and copies of “Land Registry title entries and title plan for part being BK411845 … for part being BK402889 … for the remainder being BK414911”.

There followed detailed correspondence between the solicitors, mostly arising from the fact that this was a new property, and so there were queries about water and gas, about a snagging inspection, about an NHBC certificate and so on. During the conveyancing process the respondent sent to the appellant’s solicitor a copy of her “Home Buyer’s Report”, that is, the survey she had arranged in relation to 39 Gordon Place, and using the recommendations in that survey she negotiated some additional terms for the contract providing for some work to be done before completion, set out as a list of things to be done by the seller within 21 days of completion. There was correspondence between the solicitors about a Deed of Easement which was needed from the Reading Borough Council providing for vehicular access to the property. Also in evidence before the FTT was email correspondence between Mr Saood and his architect, which referred to the sale of 39 Gordon Place.

On 9 January 2019 the respondent’s solicitor wrote to Neale Turk LLP asking for office copy entries for various title numbers, not including BK402889. On 24 January 2019 Neale Turk LLP wrote to the respondent’s solicitor in answer to some queries and referred to “land registered under title number BK402889 which includes part of the land that the property is constructed on”.

I pause to point out all the correspondence described above is typical of, and only of, a perfectly ordinary domestic conveyancing transaction and nothing else. It bears no resemblance to the sale of a vacant plot of land with development potential. Nothing in the sales particulars, the correspondence, or the purchaser’s survey made reference to anything other than 39 Gordon Place. It is completely obvious, as a matter of common sense let alone professional experience, that had the appellant intended to sell the Disputed Land – which as can be seen on the plan is big enough to build a house on – then the Disputed land would have been a prominent feature in the sales particulars. Had the appellant intended to buy the Disputed Land she would have arranged a survey not just of 39 Gordon Place but of the Disputed Land as well.

The draft contract itself described the land as “39 Gordon Place, Reading RG30 1LA”. Opposite “title numbers” it listed BK411845, BK402889 and BK414911. That was correct as far as it went but the contract should have also said that only part of BK402889 was included in 39 Gordon Place. There was no plan attached to the contract.

On 29 January 2019 Neale Turk LLP sent an email to the respondent’s solicitor, in answer to a query about the title plans which arose because of course the new house was not on the Land Registry plan, and said that there should be no difficulty “as the application consists of the transfer of three whole titles”. Aside from the draft contract itself that is the only reference in the correspondence to the sale of the whole of BK402889. The following day contracts were exchanged and on 1 February 2019 the sale was completed. The transfer, which Neale Turk LLP drafted and provided to the respondent’s solicitor, was a TR1 (whereas a sale of part would have been a TP1); it set out the three title numbers, did not state that part only of BK402889 was transferred and did not include a plan. Thus the whole of BK402889 was transferred to the respondent.

In 2022 Mr Saood applied for planning permission to build on the disputed land, and discovered that the appellant no longer owned it. A request for a transfer back was refused, and so an application for rectification was made to the FTT on 16 December 2022.