[2025] UKUT 294 (LC)

The narrow view proposed by the appellant is that if the person who is the servient owner at the start of the prescriptive user period is legally incompetent, then a lost modern grant cannot be presumed from that user; while if they are competent, they fall to be treated as the grantor. Here, the legally incompetent charity was the servient owner at the start of the user period, so a grant by it cannot be presumed. The question of a prior grant by some other competent grantor does not arise.

Although the submissions of both counsel before me started with a consideration of the legal textbooks, the Tribunal prefers to start with a review of the cases to which it was referred, and to do so in chronological order.