Nathaniel Duckworth KC and Gavin Bennison appear for the successful respondent in a commercial boundary dispute appeal, Handy Cross Dev Co Ltd v Vanni Properties Ltd [2026] EWHC 266 (Ch)
1. On Thursday 12 February 2026 Sir Anthony Mann gave judgment in Handy Cross Dev Co Ltd v Vanni Properties Ltd [2026] EWHC 266 (Ch), upholding the first-instance judgment of His Honour Judge Gerald in a boundary dispute between adjoining commercial premises in High Wycombe.
2. The appeal addressed the novel point of whether a local authority’s approval of a revised application for planning permission, granted six months after the date of the transfer creating the disputed boundary, counted as probative subsequent conduct that was admissible for the purposes of ascertaining the location of the boundary under the principle explained in Ali v Lane.
3. Sir Anthony Mann concluded that it did not. The decision affirms the need for conduct post-dating the operative transfer to be both truly bilateral in nature in order to be admissible under Ali v Lane and for a local authority’s actions as landowner to be kept distinct from its actions and function as local planning authority.
Background
4. The disputed boundary lay between a Hilton hotel owned by the appellant and a self-storage unit and office development owned by the respondent. The boundary had been created by a transfer in December 2018. The transfer involved the subdivision of a parcel of brownfield land, owned by Wycombe District Council, which at that time was undeveloped and lacked any pre-existing physical features along the line of the boundary. The transfer incorporated a boundary plan – which was on a large scale and did not lend itself to plotting a precise boundary – and another plan by reference to which certain drainage features referred to in some of the covenants in the transfer were identified (‘the Drainage Plan’).
5. Two and a half years or so after the creation of the boundary, and once the hotel and an adjacent access road and car park had been built, a dispute arose between the parties as to whether various features erected by each of them in the vicinity of the boundary, including part of the access road itself, trespassed onto the other’s side of the boundary.
6. Each side relied on evidence from both boundary and valuation surveyors at trial. At first instance HHJ Gerald in the County Court at Central London rejected the boundary line contended for the appellant’s boundary surveyor in forthright terms. He held that the boundary lay in the location contended for by the respondent and granted a mandatory injunction requiring the trespassing part of the appellant’s access road to be removed together with an order for indemnity costs.
Decision and implications
7. By the time of closing submissions, the appellant contended for a line drawn by reference to a proposed site plan, prepared after the date of the operative transfer in December 2018, which had been submitted to the Council in support of an application for a non-material amendment to the planning permission for the hotel.
8. On appeal, the appellant argued that this plan – the ‘April 2019 Plan’ - was admissible pursuant to the principles in Ali v Lane, in which Carnwath LJ held at [36]-[37] that in the event of an originating conveyance being unclear or ambiguous the parties’ subsequent conduct in relation to the boundary is admissible as evidence of their intentions at the date of the originating conveyance if, and only if, it is probative of what was intended at the date of the conveyance.
9. The appellant argued that the April 2019 Plan should be preferred over the Drainage Plan contained within the transfer itself as evidence of where the parties had intended the precise location of the boundary to be at the date of the transfer.
10. Sir Anthony Mann rejected that argument. He held that HHJ Gerald had been correct to place reliance on the Drainage Plan and to conclude that the April 2019 Plan was inadmissible under the Ali v Lane principle. The Court held that:
- HHJ Gerald was right to place reliance upon the Drainage Plan because, in light of the ambiguity of the primary transfer plan, the remainder of the transfer was the first port of call for clarification of the intended boundary. The Drainage Plan was not expressed to be a boundary plan, but it did show the location of the boundary at a larger scale and it was therefore of use in determining the boundary location notwithstanding that its prime purpose was to identify the location of drainage works to be carried out. Although the legend of the Drainage Plan stated that the plan was not suitable for scaling, that was not reason to ignore it altogether: [31]-[43].
- As to the April 2019 Plan, to be admissible under Ali v Lane, subsequent conduct must be probative of the intention of both parties to the transfer, not just one of them: [45], [48].
- Further, the dual capacities of a local authority as property owner and as planning authority needed to be kept distinct. There was clear authority that one should not assume that the local authority, when exercising its planning functions, would consult the department concerned with protecting the local authority’s interests as landowner and that the knowledge of one department should not be imputed to another department: Maximus Ltd v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2018] EWHC 1933 at [39], per Dove J (cited at [19] of the judgment).
- The April 2019 Plan failed to meet the Ali v Lane test for both of these reasons. First, it was no more than a unilateral act on the part of the appellant. The Council as local planning authority did not need to express any view as to the correctness of the boundary line shown on it in order to determine the planning application submitted to it. At the date of the transfer in December 2018, there was no reason to suppose that the Council knew the precise location of the boundary would be material in the planning process even though it had been made aware that a subsequent planning application might be made.
- Second, the Council was acting in its capacity as planning authority, not as landowner, when it considered the later planning application for a non-material amendment. This was reinforced by an express term in the agreement for sale that approvals or consents given by the Council in one of these two capacities should not be taken as approvals or consents in the other capacity. Its approval of that application, with the April 2019 plan contained within it, did not evidence any intention qua landowner as to the location of the boundary: [50]-[54].
11. The decision in Handy Cross v Vanni Properties will be of particular note for those acting for local authorities or other institutions acting in dual capacities in relation to land, but also for anyone acting in boundary disputes generally.
12. Nathaniel Duckworth KC and Gavin Bennison, instructed by James Souter and Emma Preece of Charles Russell Speechlys LLP, acted for the successful respondent.
13. A copy of the judgment can be downloaded below.
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