If you are subdividing a Parcel of land, you may find you are presented with a plan that includes a road that is not a road. If you read my last post, you know what I mean: https://donmitchellcbeqc.blogspot.com/2022/02/roads-in-anguilla.html
The surveyor's plan that we are going to look at is not chosen because there is anything special about it. I suspect that there are hundreds of similar ones approved by the Land Development Control Committee (LDCC) and also approved by the Chief Surveyor and filed in the Survey Department. I pick it only because it involves a parcel of land in my neighbourhood, and I am familiar with it. It reveals what I consider to be an outrageous state of affairs. Let us now look at it.
This is part of a plan for the sub-division of Parcel 6 owned at the time by a Mrs Richardson of St Thomas. Parcel 6 lies to the north of my Parcels 293 and 294. It shows a right of way painted red to the west, north, and east of my Parcels. Sometime in the late 1980s, I gave this right of way to the Parcels to the east of my property so they would have access over my land to the North Hill Main Road that lies to the west.
I contacted her in St Thomas at the time I was preparing to register the right of way to the Parcels to my east. She agreed that we should register a joint right of way along our boundaries. She told me who her lawyer was. I prepared the mutual Grant of Easement forms. I sent them to her lawyer for approval and for Mrs Richardson to sign them and return them to me for registration. Months passed. Nothing came back. I repeatedly contacted the lawyer. There was no explanation why the forms were not forthcoming. I did not want to contact her behind the back of her lawyer.
I felt I could not wait any longer to register a right of way for the benefit of the Parcels to the east. I registered the forms. I hoped that in due course Mrs Richardson’s forms would turn up. At that time, the Survey Department required all rights of way be a minimum of 10 ft wide. That is why the right of way to the west and east of my lands is 10 ft wide while that to the north is only 5 ft wide. My 5 ft were supposed to be supplemented by the same amount of land from Mrs Richardson to make it 10 ft wide. Her forms never turned up and were never registered. Consequently, she never got the right of access I was offering her from the public road in the west to her Parcel in the east.
Knowing that a five-foot roadway was inadequate for the use of the owners to the east, I erected my fence around my property about 12 feet back from my boundary line on the north. There is physically plenty of room for a car to pass around my existing fence. That is the roadway I use to enter my yard from the north.
Many years later, at the height of the Anguilla land boom bubble in about 2008, I got a telephone call. Mrs Richardson was outside my northern fence. She was showing a prospective purchaser one of the lots that Parcel 6 had been divided into. I went outside to say hello. I was meeting her in person for the first time. Her surveyor was also there, as was the prospective purchaser. I then saw the plan for the first time and learned that Mrs Richardson had subdivided her land. I can only describe my reaction to this subdivision plan as shock and horror. What does it show?
First, you will notice that the plan includes “Lot #6” which is called a “Road”. You will see that it goes the full length of what used to be Parcel 6 and even swings around to the west, and then appears to end abruptly. I am not quarrelling with it. It does me no harm. But I did feel sorry for Mrs Richardson. This road is not a road at all! Those of you who are lawyers or surveyors or who have read the previous article understand that. For those of you that are unclear, let me explain.
First, up to when I last checked the alleged 25 ft road remained private land owned by Mrs Richardson. She had not been invited by government to make it a public road by way of a grant by gift or by sale. She had not given it to the government for public use. She had not signed a transfer to the Crown. It was still registered in her name, though apparently reserved for a public road in time. Despite the label, it was not a public road.
Second, if it was meant to be a road, ie, a public road, it was, in my opinion, not properly done. It did not take the future owner of any of these proposed lots to the nearest public road. Even if Mrs Richardson had made a grant to the Crown, it did not connect her land to any other public road. It did not incorporate the private road over my land. Just as I had no right to pass on the imaginary 25 ft road called “Lot # 6”, so she had no right to pass on the 10 ft right of way on my land. She could prevent me from trespassing on her Lot # 6. I could prevent her from accessing my private driveway. We had no rights over each other’s land. This was a road that was not a road and that went nowhere.
We all applaud what appears to be the effort by the LDCC to increase the road network around the island. But it should be done the right way. If what we are doing is to sneak parcels of land out of the hands of unsuspecting landowners to create public roads, that is not right. In my view that would border on an illegal confiscation of private property contrary to the Constitution of Anguilla.
What the surveyor should have done would by now be obvious to you. Mrs Richardson, or her lawyer, or her surveyor, should have contacted me and all other bordering landowners. They should have told us of her plan to sub-divide Parcel 6 with either an attached common right of way or a public road. They should have explained to us that the LDCC was insisting that the planned sub-division of Parcel 6 must include a 25 ft access road to the nearest public main road. They should have pointed out to us that we had already made provision both on the register and on the ground for a right of way. They should have asked us to contribute our provision over our lands (in my case approximately 12 ft as her surveyor would have noticed) to a common access road or right of way. There is no reason to believe that we would have had any objection. My neighbour and the landowners to the east would have got the use of a 25 ft road and would have lost nothing extra.
Mrs Richardson would have lost only about a third of an acre and not two thirds as she did. She told me she was selling one of the one-acre lots for US$150,000.00. I am no good at mathematics, but I calculate that with the loss of one third of an acre she suffered a completely unnecessary loss of about US$50,000.00 worth of land at the time.
And, she still had not got access from the main road to her land! If she tried to sell one of the new lots to a prospective purchaser who was properly advised, he or she would be told that the land had no access to a public road. No properly advised person would risk purchasing this land without a registered right of all the way to the main road.
It should be a function of the Survey Department to ensure that all landowners bordering a survey plan have consented to or have no objection to any proposed survey plan. Surveyors should be obliged to notify all neighbouring landowners and to help negotiate all relevant rights and easements. No survey should be accepted for lodging unless all relevant neighbouring landowners have signed a consent form indicating they do not have any objection, and have signed any necessary grant of easement.
Tell me if you can why my neighbour was made to proceed in this way.
As far as I am concerned this survey and its approval was a complete fiasco. And it is a fiasco that is, so far as I am aware, regularly repeated in both the LDCC and the Lands and Survey Department.
This is a revised version of an article I first published on 14 December 2007. I republish it because the problems described continue to appear. https://corruptionfreeanguilla.blogspot.com/2007/12/non-roads.html
