 In this activity you've been asked to consider some of the changes brought about to the Law of Adverse Possession by the Land Registration Act 2002, which has made some significant changes to the law. Before we discuss those changes it's really important to understand that these changes only apply to land that is registered. For land that is not registered, unregistered land, the old law still applies so we now have two systems of adverse possession depending on whether the land is registered or unregistered. Now hopefully you've managed to work out what some of these dramatic changes to the law have been. Essentially under the old law a squatter who would be in an adverse possession for 12 years would automatically become the owner of the land. The new law, the Land Registration Act 2002, Schedule 6 makes it much much more difficult for a squatter to succeed in successfully becoming the new owner of the land. So let's just consider some of the steps the squatter must take in order to become the new owner of registered land under the Land Registration Act 2002. First of all the squatter needs to be very proactive. After he's been on the land for 10 years he has to make an application to the land registry to become the new owner of the land. That's the first step. Nothing is automatic anymore. The squatter needs to be proactive. At this point if the owner does nothing in response to receiving the squatter's application then the squatter will succeed in becoming the new owner of the land. Now for obvious reasons it's very unlikely that the owner is going to be content to let this happen so it's very rare that a squatter will win because the owner's done nothing. Alternatively at this point the owner may serve a counter notice on the squatter and if this happens the squatter will generally lose at this 10 year point. The squatter's application will fail but there are some exceptions to this. One of the main exceptions is where the squatter has adversely possessed land which is on a boundary with his neighbour. If the squatter has mistakenly used an extra piece of land on the boundary with his neighbour the squatter can succeed at the 10 year point. But this is a very narrow exception. Normally if the owner serves a counter notice the squatter will fail at the 10 year point. But all is not necessarily lost for the squatter because if he loses at the 10 year point but manages to stay on the land for a further 2 years the legislation allows the squatter to apply again to become the owner of the land and this time the squatter will win. So there is a chance still for the squatter to win. As you can hopefully see it's now much more difficult for squatters to become the new owner of somebody else's land under the Land Registration Act 2002. We've really tightened up the situations in which squatters will win. Now you need to think about whether this change is an appropriate one. In the first video we thought about some reasons for having a law of adverse possession. We said that it respects squatters psychological connection to land. It encourages owners to use their land. It ensures that the law is in sync with reality. It ensures that ownership of land matches up with the people that are actually using the land. What you need to think about is whether the new law goes too far in respecting owners rights at the expense of respecting squatters rights.