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Insights / News
On 16th July 2026, Joshua Hitchens appeared unled before the Privy Council in Francis v Attorney General of St Helena [2026] UKPC 32. On 17 September 2026, judgment was handed down in favour of Mr Francis, who was represented by Joshua and Walter Scott of the Public Solicitor’s Office.
Read the background to the appeal in our previous article here: Joshua Hitchens appears before the Privy Council in Francis v Attorney General of St Helena.
The opening words of the judgment also give a flavour of the unusual facts of the case:
“This is an appeal concerning the former dairy of Napoleon Bonaparte, an 1833 statute governing the affairs of the East India Company, and the system of land registration in one of the most remote inhabited islands on earth”. These are the enticing words with which the appellant opens his written case in this appeal to the Board from St Helena. Put more prosaically, the issue in the appeal is whether Crown land in St Helena can be acquired by prescription.
The appeal arose from an application to rectify the Land Register in respect of land at Longwood, part of the former dairy serving the house in which Napoleon Bonaparte lived in exile. The Crown objected that Crown land could not be acquired by prescription, and the Registrar of Lands stated a case for the opinion of the Supreme Court on that question, which had never previously been argued on the island.
The Chief Justice held that there was no bar to prescription. The Court of Appeal reversed that decision, holding that section 159 of the Ordinance, which preserves interests conferred on the Crown “by any other written law”, protected land vested in the Crown by section 112 of the Saint Helena Act 1833, the sole surviving provision of what was originally the Government of India Act 1833.
The Board (Lord Reed, Lord Burrows, Lady Rose, Lord Snowden and Sir Anthony Smellie), in a judgment given by Lord Reed, rejected that literal construction as incompatible with the purpose of the registration system the Ordinance establishes. Section 159 protects the Crown’s statutory rights and powers over land belonging to others; it does not shield the Crown’s own ownership of land, which falls squarely within the scope of registration. The question stated by the Registrar was answered in the affirmative and the matter remitted for determination.
Joshua acted for Mr Francis, instructed by, and appearing alongside, Walter Scott, Public Solicitor of St Helena.
Watch the hearings, access the statement of facts and written submissions, and read the full judgment on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council website.
Joshua Hitchens was called to the Bar in 2018 and practises in commercial, administrative and public law, regulatory and disciplinary work, sanctions and civil fraud. He is ranked in the Legal 500 and Chambers & Partners. He is currently instructed in cases before the UK Supreme Court, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the Court of Appeal, the European Court of Human Rights, the Supreme Court of St Helena and the High Court of England and Wales.
Joshua Hitchens is appointed to the Equality & Human Rights Commission of St Helena. Read his full profile here.
To find out more, contact Lexie Johnson on + 44 (0) 207 427 0801 or Dave Lovitt on +44 (0)20 7353 6381
News 17 Sep, 2026
