REF/2005/1543

ADJUDICATOR TO HER MAJESTY’S LAND REGISTRY
LAND REGISTRATION ACT 2002

IN THE MATTER OF A REFERENCE FROM HM LAND REGISTRY

BETWEEN
PHILLIP GORDON
 
APPLICANT

and

SUZANNE CHATFIELD

RESPONDENT

Property Address:  28 Lambert Street Hull HU5 2SJ
Title Number:  HS58618

Before: Mr. Michael Mark sitting as Deputy Adjudicator to HM Land Registry

Sitting at:  Hull Combined Court
On: 1 June 2007

Applicant Representation:  In person
Respondent Representation:  In person

___________________________________________________________________________

DECISION

1.	For the reasons given below, I shall direct the Chief Land Registrar to cancel the application of the Applicant dated 30 June 2005 and to refuse any future application by the Applicant for any entry to be made in respect of the above property based on any matter occurring prior to 1 June 2007.

2.	 The Respondent is the registered proprietor of the above property (“the property”), which is her home.  Until 2004 it was registered in the joint names of herself and her former partner, from whom she had separated in 1999, but it was transferred into her sole name, apparently as the result of a court order made in about 2000.

3.	In 2000, she began a relationship with the Applicant.  He had his own rented home, but according to him, from early in the relationship he would stay almost all the time at the property.  The Respondent, he claimed, was in arrears with her mortgage repayments and from early 2000 he made contributions towards the mortgage repayments of £80 per month.  In February 2004, he moved into the property with the Respondent, but the relationship broke down.

4.	The Respondent moved out of the property in November 2004, according to her because the Applicant had been violent towards her and because he would not leave.  Eventually, in May 2005, an injunction was granted by the Hull county Court on the application of the Respondent ordering the Applicant to leave the property by 3 June 2005 and not to return or to molest the Respondent.  Further violence followed, as a result of which the Applicant was arrested and charged with various criminal offences.  He was convicted and sentenced to a term of imprisonment.

5.	On 30 June 2005, solicitors acting on his behalf applied to enter a restriction in the property register for the property at the Land Registry that no disposition by a sole proprietor of the property except a trust corporation under which capital money arose could be registered unless authorised by an Order of the Court.  This was supported by a statutory declaration sworn by the Applicant on 16 June 2005, while in prison, that he had a beneficial interest in the property which had arisen because since approximately March 2000 he had contributed £80 per month towards the mortgage arrears and had therefore made a capital contribution towards the property in excess of £4000.  

6.	The Respondent objected to the application.  She accepted that the Applicant had given her £80 per month in cash for food between February and November 2004, but denied any further payments had been made by him.  In particular, she denied that any payments had been made by him towards the mortgage.

7.	The dispute was referred by the Chief Land Registrar to the Adjudicator and the Applicant’s Statement of Case, prepared by solicitors on his behalf, is dated 17 November 2005.  It repeats the claim that the Applicant had paid in excess of £4000 at £80 per month from about March 2000, and alleged that documentary evidence of the payments had been destroyed by the Respondent.

8.	In a further undated letter to the Adjudicator written by the Applicant in June 2006, after his release from prison, the Applicant again pursued the question of the payments which he said he had made towards mortgage arrears, which he then stated were between April 1999 and December 2004.  He also alleged handwritten agreements with the Respondent relating to the property which he also claimed that the Respondent had destroyed.  

9.	A few weeks before the hearing on Friday 1 June 2007, the Applicant instructed new solicitors, who prepared the trial bundle.  There appeared in the trial bundle, which was received late by the Adjudicator and the Respondent only two or three days before the hearing, copies of three new statements, all headed “In proposed proceedings”.  One was by the Applicant, and is dated 30 April 2007.  It describes the payment of mortgage arrears of £76 per month from March 2000 to May 2005.  It states that the Applicant lived with the Respondent from March 2000 “on and off although in February 2004 she became registered as my carer and I then moved into the property on a full time basis.”  I note that this contrasts with his evidence to me at the hearing that, although he had retained his flat, he had, with only occasional days away, been with her at the property 24/7 even before February 2004.  

10.	In his new witness statement he also claimed for the first time to have undertaken a significant amount of building work in relation to the property and to have paid for other work to be done.  He claims to have given the Respondent a significant amount of paperwork in relation to the work done, including receipts.  

11.	His first claim as to payment is that he paid £5463.75 inclusive of VAT for various labourers plus a builder, Mr. Staves for various building work.  I note that this would be equivalent to a sum of £4650 + VAT.  Although he signed the statement with a statement of truth only a month ago, the Applicant stated in evidence before me that the new solicitors who prepared this statement had got this wrong and he had not made these payments.  He did, however, pursue the remaining claim that he had done work renovating the kitchen, carpeting the house, removing and replacing fireplaces, and decorating, and that he had spent over £4000 on materials and labour for the kitchen, and on purchasing carpets, decorating materials, a fireplace and roof panels.  He also claimed to have paid for other outgoings and to have subsidised the Respondent’s income by giving her money.

12.	There were also two short statements from the Applicant’s brother and from Mr. Staves.  The latter made no reference to his having received any sums from the Applicant but both he and the Applicant’s brother made reference to work done by the Applicant.

13.	I was unwilling to permit these additional claims to be made, without prior warning at such a late stage.  The Applicant’s brother and Mr. Chaves did not even attend to give evidence and the Respondent had no opportunity to produce any evidence, including documentary evidence, in answer.  However, the attempted introduction of such substantial additional material at such a late stage, when it had never been relied on before, although, if true, it was obviously relevant to the Applicant’s claim, did in my judgment call for an explanation.  It would have been obvious material to be included in the original statutory declaration and Statement of Case, both drafted by his solicitors, and in the Applicant’s own letter written in June 2006.

14.	In addition, the Applicant had suffered injuries from a criminal assault before 2000, which he told me had led to his being awarded about £5500 compensation from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board.  The injuries had included injuries to his leg and his eyesight so serious that he was unable to work.  Apart from his compensation, he had no capital and his only income was income support and incapacity benefit until early 2004.  In early 2004, he moved in with the Respondent, and a joint claim was made as a result of which an award was made of disability living allowance to him and carer’s allowance to her.  As the claim was made as a joint claim, both allowances were paid to the Applicant.  The Respondent stated, without contradiction, that she had been in receipt of Jobseeker’s Allowance, but had given it up to become his carer in February 2004.

15.	In evidence, the Applicant stated that he had been awarded the lower rate of the care component of disability living allowance and the lowest rate of the care component.  He also stated that his disabilities were the problems with his leg and his eyesight which had been there since the attack on him which had led to the award of compensation to which I have referred.

16.	I find this puzzling since the award of care allowance would only have been made if the disabled person was entitled to the middle rate of the care component (see s.70(2) of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992).  Under section 72 of that Act, the lowest rate of the care component is only awarded where a person is so severely disabled that he requires from another person in connection with his bodily functions attention from another person for a significant portion of the day or so that he cannot prepare a cooked meal for himself if he had the ingredients.  For the award of the middle rate of the care component, he would need to be so severely disabled that he required frequent attention throughout the day in connection with his bodily functions or continual supervision throughout the day in order to avoid substantial danger to himself or others.  I ignore night-time needs for this purpose as there is no suggestion that the Applicant’s problems gave rise to night-time needs.

17.	For the lower rate of the mobility component, under section 73 of that Act, the Applicant would have needed to be so severely disabled that, disregarding any ability he may have to use routes which are familiar to him on his own, he cannot take advantage of the faculty of walking out of doors without guidance or supervision from another person most of the time.

18.	I have not seen any copies of the claim forms and other evidence used when claiming these benefits, nor have I seen any medical evidence as to the extent of the Applicant’s alleged disabilities, but I have great difficulty is seeing how somebody with the disabilities claimed by the Applicant which led to his being awarded even the lowest rate of the care component of disability living allowance, and even more so the middle rate which he must have been awarded for the Respondent to be able to claim the carer’s allowance, could have had the physical ability to carry out the work which the Applicant claimed in his latest statement that he carried out.

19.	The Applicant’s evidence as to the mortgage payments was that the Respondent would complete the payment slips each month from about March 2000, and he would go to a named branch of the National Westminster Bank with £80 in cash and make the monthly payments.  He would get two or three pounds change and the receipted counterfoil, and would give the receipted counterfoil to the Respondent.

20.	The Respondent’s evidence was that she had been self-employed, in business with her partner selling antiques, for 15 years before meeting the Applicant in 1999.  There were goods left over from the business, which she gradually managed to sell off between 2000 and early 2001.  As a result she was able to make larger payments initially than the £80 per month which the Applicant claims to have paid.  From about early 2001, she had paid slightly less than £80 per month as shown on the mortgage account statements from the Bank.  She had usually made the payments herself although she had occasionally given the money to the Applicant to take to the Bank to pay in.  The Applicant had never made any financial contribution, except that from February 2004, after moving in, until she had left in November 2004, he had given her £80 per week.  She initially described this as for food and later as a general contribution to outgoings.  She claimed that before February 2004 the Applicant had only stayed for about 2 to 4 nights a week (less for several months when the house was being renovated with the aid of a local authority grant).  He had also left in sheds on the property about 10 motor cycles and repairing equipment which formerly been part of a motor cycle business the Applicant used to run before he was injured.

21.	I prefer the evidence of the Respondent to that of the Applicant as to the amount of time he spent at the property before February 2004.  Quite apart from other unsatisfactory elements in the Applicant’s account, to which I have referred above and to which I shall refer below, it appears to me that if he had indeed been living 24/7 at the property as he claims, he and the Respondent would plainly have been living together as a couple for social security benefit purposes, and it would have been their duty to declare that to their Benefits Office.  That did not happen. 

22.	An examination of the mortgage account statements and correspondence from the Bank shows that in 2000, no payments were received by the Bank until 17 April 2000.  From then until the end of the year, a single payment was made each month in each case of over £100.  The amounts paid monthly in 2001 are unclear as the bank statements are incomplete, but from those that are disclosed it seems clear that monthly payments fluctuated in size.  No payment was made in January 2002, but on 28 February 2002 a payment was made of over £230.  There was then no payment until May 2002, when a payment was received of over £150.  There was then no payment in June 2002.  From then on, monthly payments appear to have been made at a rate of rather less than £80 per month, roughly the size of the monthly payments which the Applicant says that he made with his own money.

23.	The payments made and omitted until mid-2002 simply do not tie in with the Applicant’s evidence as to his regular monthly payments from March 2000, and I am satisfied that he made no such payments.  Further, the matters to which I have referred lead me to the conclusion that on the balance of probabilities the Applicant made no direct contributions to the mortgage repayments and I so find.  I am not satisfied that the Applicant made any payments of any kind to or for the benefit of the Respondent apart from the payments of £80 per week between February and November 2004 which were made as a general contribution towards living expenses for the short period they were living together.

24.	I also reject the Applicant’s claim that there was a written agreement by the Respondent that she would give him what was fair if they separated or if she sold the property.  Again, this claim was made long after this claim was first made and long after solicitors prepared both his statutory declaration and Statement of Case, and I can see no good reason why she should ever have signed such a document, unless under threat of violence from him.

25.	In any event, an examination of the Bank’s accounts, statements and correspondence makes it clear that part of the mortgage payments were made by the DSS, and that the totality of the sums received by the Bank was only sufficient overall approximately to cover the interest on the sums due and other outgoings.  The amount due on 1 January 2000 appears to have been £27702.71 (adding together the four sub-accounts revealed by the statements of account), and the opening balance on 1 January 2005 was £27395.42.  It is therefore plain that even if any sum was paid by the Applicant, its effect on the capital amount owing was negligible.

26.	In summary, therefore, I am unable to find a shadow of a justified claim by the Applicant for any share in the equity of the property.  His clear stated intention is to pursue further a claim for a share in the property which he puts at £20000.  Insofar as this is based on a claim that he did the work, and paid the sums, set out in his statement dated 30 April 2007, this claim ought to have been included in the present claim.  A claimant cannot make his claim to an equitable interest in property in chunks in several sets of proceedings.  The claim has been made in these proceedings and has failed.  It cannot be renewed on the basis of facts which existed, and were known to him, before these proceedings began, just because he chooses not to refer to them in these proceedings until two or three days before the hearing.  To avoid any risk of improper interference by the Applicant with the Respondent’s property, I therefore intend to direct the Chief Land Registrar pursuant to rule 41(2) of the Adjudicator to Her Majesty’s Land Registry (Practice and Procedure) Rules 2003 to reject any future application by the Applicant to have any entry of any kind made in relation to this property which is based on any matter occurring prior to the date of the hearing on 1 June 2007.

Dated this 13th day of June 2007

By Order of The Adjudicator to HM Land Registry