BP Properties Ltd v Buckler – Case Summary – IPSA LOQUITUR

# BP Properties Ltd v Buckler
Citations: [1987] 2 EGLR 168.

Facts: Despite the landowners, BP Properties, having legally obtained an eviction order against Mrs Buckler, who lived in the property with her son, she had refused to leave the property. However, Mrs Buckler was disabled and the case had attracted a lot of unwelcome publicity against BP. The company therefore decided to offer Mrs Buckler a licence to occupy the property rent-free in an order to stem the public outcry at their attempts to evict the disabled woman. Mrs Buckler had never formally accepted the offer of a licence but had continued to live in the property until her death. When her son then claimed possessory title to the property on the grounds of adverse possession, however, the court found that there had been a licence granted to Mrs Buckler to occupy the property and that there was therefore no adverse possession claim to be made.

Principle: Where a licence is offered but never refused this may be taken to mean that the licence has been granted.
Application: This case illustrates how the court has in the past used the issue of permission to deny an adverse possession claim.
The finding in BP Properties v Buckler has been criticised because it suggests that a landowner may defeat an adverse possession claim simply by unilaterally granting a licence to the occupier. In his judgment in the case Dillon LJ said that the occupier should have rejected the offer in writing to prevent it from being granted. However, findings in later cases, including Long v Tower Hamlets London BC [1996] 3 WLR 317, suggest that this was a singular case distinguished by its facts and that the courts may in future reject any such line of attack put forward by dispossessed landowners.