Hussein Noor Haji & another v Abdi Tari Abkula [2021] KEELC 3510 (KLR)

Both parties relied on council minutes, allotment letters and PDPs. Minutes and PDPs confer no proprietary interest. A letter of allotment confers rights only upon acceptance and payment of stand premium and ground rent, which only the defendant did. The defendant's allotment letter (3.7.1998) also preceded the plaintiffs' (4.9.1998), and under the first-in-time principle the earlier allotment prevails. However, the defendant failed to prove fraud in the plaintiffs' allotment, so cancellation was not grounded on irregularity but on priority of allotment.

The court held that PDPs are planning tools for determining land use and cannot solely confer or determine rights in land. Similarly, letters by officials (P.exhibit-5 and D.exhibit-6) supporting each side cannot prove ownership absent underlying records of the allotting authority. DW3, an enforcement officer, lacked a demonstrated mandate from the County Government to testify on its land records, diminishing his probative value.

The report of the physical planning officer was not prepared through a court-sanctioned process and was inconclusive. The NLC document was a letter, not a report; it lacked input from the Director of Physical Planning, did not involve a site visit, and the orders enabling it were never extracted or served by the defence. The court therefore declined to rely on either document.