HM Land Registry

Land Registry Head Office, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields

The 'Land Registry (officially known under the Land Registration Act 2002 as Her Majesty's Land Registry') is a British Governmental organisation created in 1862. The Land Registry is responsible for publicly recording interests in registered land in England and Wales and reports to the Ministry of Justice. It is now an executive agency.

The equivalent office in Scotland is the Registers of Scotland.

Purpose

Like land registration organisations in other countries, the Land Registry guarantees title to registered estates and interests in land. It records the ownership rights of freehold properties, and leasehold properties where the lease has been granted for a term exceeding seven years.

The definition of land can include the buildings situated upon the land, particularly where parts of buildings at different levels (such as flats) are in different ownership. It is also possible to register the ownership of the mines and minerals which lie within the ground as well as airspace above property where this is in separate ownership.

The Land Registry receives no government funding, being required to ensure that its income covers expenditure, and finances itself from registration and search fees. It provides online access to its database of titles (ownership and charges or interests by other parties) and most plans (maps).

The Land Registry is currently encouraging property owners whose property is not registered to make voluntary applications for registration. Although there are over 20,000,000 registered properties in England and Wales, only just over half of the land mass is registered. Much of this land is rural property in the hands of large institutional landowners such as the Church of England, educational institutions and the Crown. Registration of land under the Land Registration Act 2002 affords property owners some protection against squatters as well as avoiding the need to produce old documents each time a property changes hands.

Offices

There are 24 Land Registry offices throughout England and Wales. They are responsible for the registration of land transactions, alongside the head office in Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, the Information Systems department in Plymouth and the Land Charges department attached to the Plymouth office. The 24 offices, each responsible for a distinct geographical area, are at Birkenhead, Coventry, Croydon, Durham, Fylde, Gloucester, Kingston upon Hull, Leicester, Nottingham, Peterborough, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Stevenage, Swansea (covering all of Wales), Telford, Tunbridge Wells, Weymouth and York.

In 2006, as a result of a review of office accommodation, the Land Registry announced the closure of several offices. In each of the five towns or cities where there are two offices at present, those offices have or will merge. The Harrow office is held under a lease that expires in 2010, and the York office's lease expires in 2015: these leases will not be renewed. All affected staff are being encouraged to transfer to an alternative office.

A further urgent review of staffing levels and overall office space (described as the Accelerated Transformation Programme) began in 2009. The economic recession, and the resultant slump in the property and mortgage markets, meant that the Land Registry's basic work in connection with simple remortgages and straightforward house sales dried up to the point where it made a financial loss for the first time in its history. The Land Registry's Board of Directors has announced proposals to close five offices, namely those at Portsmouth, Tunbridge Wells, Croydon, Stevenage and Peterborough. The closures are planned to take place in two stages, beginning in February 2011, and will run alongside other measures that could mean the loss of over 2,000 jobs.

However, the Land Registry is suffering from its own over complacency, resulting from too much money arising out of an inflated property market and the belief that it knew best what its customers wanted. It was easy for senior management to look good when the money was rolling in, much more difficult when the property market collapsed. Instead of investing in what it did best, which was of course the registration of land, it tried to control the conveyancing chain and electronic delivery of services. The sudden departure of Peter Collis, Chief Land Registrar and Chief Executive of Land Registr, may lead some observers to assume that he was pushed, but this would only be true if he wasn't considered by the government to be the right person to sort out the problems created on his watch.

Each local office has an area manager, a land registrar who is the senior lawyer in the office, and a customer services manager. Each office also has a team of staff responsible for processing applications lodged by members of the legal profession and the general public.

The organisation is headed by the Chief Land Registrar and Chief Executive. With the largest property database in Europe, the Land Registry underpins the economy of the United Kingdom by guaranteeing the ownership of many billions of pounds worth of property. Around £1 million worth of property is processed every minute in England and Wales.

Since December 1990, the Land Register has been open to the public. For a fee anyone can inspect the Register, find out the name and address of the current owner of any registered property or obtain a copy of any registered title. This can also be done online.

In 2004 the Land Registry was awarded the government's Charter Mark for a record fifth time, becoming only one of a handful of organisations to achieve this.

The Land Registry has an Independent Complaints Reviewer.

Disputed applications to the Land Registry are determined by the Adjudicator to HM Land Registry, an independent office created by the Land Registration Act 2002. Under previous legislation this function had been the responsibility of the Chief Land Registrar.

The Land Registry has a recognised course on land registration law and its underpinning property law, the 'Qualification in Land Registration Law and Practice. It also covers the Land Registry's legal and plans practice. There are two levels: a one year certificate course at A level standard and a two-year diploma course at degree standard.

History

In 1857 the Royal Commission on Registration of Title proposed a system of registration administered by a central registry in London with district offices. The Land Registration Act 1862 was introduced by the then Lord Chancellor, Richard Bethell, 1st Baron Westbury. The Act provided for the registration of Freehold estates in land. The system of registration adopted had its origins in a system that had been piloted in South Australia by that colony's then Prime Minister Sir Robert Torrens.

Brent Spencer Follett, the first Chief Land Registrar, opened the Land Registry's first offices, at 34 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, on 15 October 1862. Mr Follett had a staff of just six people and was paid £2,500 a year.

At first registration was not compulsory, and once property was registered there was no compulsion to register any subsequent transactions. Thus it was possible for the person registered as the owner of a property to cease to be the owner while remaining on the register. Following the Land Transfer Act 1875 there were seven further attempts to introduce Land Registration Acts, all of which failed.

A report by Sir Charles Brickdale on the system of land registration used in Germany proved influential. In 1897 the then Lord Chancellor, Hardinge Giffard, 1st Earl of Halsbury introduced the Land Transfer Act 1897, which brought an element of compulsion into the registration system. To satisfy the demands of the legal profession, the option of a county veto was offered.

London County Council was attracted to the idea of compulsory registration and voted in favour of it in 1899. This led the Land Registry to expand. At this time the first female staff were employed and new technology, in the form of typewriters, was introduced.

In 1913 a new Land Registry headquarters was completed in Lincoln's Inn Fields.

Two new pieces of land legislation were enacted in 1925: the Law of Property Act and the Land Registration Act. Government-initiated extensions to compulsory registration were suspended for ten years, but Eastbourne and Hastings voluntarily became areas of compulsory registration. In 1925 the government forecast that the whole of England and Wales would be subject to compulsory registration by 1955, but in fact the process was to take much longer.

In 1940, after the 193rd air raid on Central London, the Land Registry was evacuated to the Marsham Court Hotel so that it could carry on its normal business. In 1950, 88 years after its creation, the Land Registry registered its one millionth title.

The growth in property ownership after the war years meant that the potential number of properties to be registered increased dramatically. This in turn slowed down the rate of land registration. To deal with the increasing workload, an office was opened in Tunbridge Wells in 1955 and a further office at Lytham St. Annes in 1957. In 1963, 101 years after the registry started, it registered its two millionth title.

Theodore Ruoff was appointed Chief Land Registrar in 1963, laid down the three fundamental principles of Land Registration:

• The Mirror principle — the register of title should reflect, accurately and completely, and beyond all argument, the facts that are material to the title
• The Curtain principle — the register should be the sole and definitive source of information for proposing purchasers
• The Insurance principle — if, as a result of human error, the title is proved to be defective in any way, then the person or persons suffering loss as a result must be able to claim compensation

New offices were opened in Gloucester (1964), Stevenage (1964), Durham (1965) and Harrow (1965).

Land registers at this time were not public records, and processing them required laborious typing and the completion of plansby hand using paintbrushes and ink. Copies of everything produced had to be made by hand. The Land Registry retained the originals, and the copies were sewn, using needle and thread, into large certificates. The certificates were produced as indisputable evidence of the ownership of the land. Such was the importance of the certificates that tampering with them was a criminal offence.

In 1986 the Plymouth Office became the first Land Registry office to produce registers electronically. Although the certificates still bore the same importance, computerisation dramatically increased the efficiency of the Land Register at a time when it was keen to bring the whole of England and Wales under compulsory registration.

In 1990 the provision of compulsory registration was brought to the whole of England and Wales, the ten millionth title was registered, and. for the first time, the Land Register was opened to public inspection.

Although compulsory registration had now spread to the whole of its jurisdiction, compulsion only occurred when a property was sold. This was a serious bar to the registration of the whole of England and Wales, and in 1998 new triggers for registration were introduced, dramatically increasing the rate of registration of land. These triggers included gifts of land, assent of land on death and raising monies by mortgages on the land.

The Land Registration Act 2002 leaves the system substantially in place, but enables the future compulsory introduction of electronic conveyancing, using electronic signatures to transfer and register property.

The new home of the Information Systems department, a state-of-the-art office with 500 staff, was opened in 2005.

Although currently only just over half of the landmass of England and Wales is registered, the Land Registry's aim is that all marketable property will be registered by 2012.

See also

• Rural Land Register
• National Land & Property Gazetteer
• Torrens system

External links

• Land Registry website
• Registers of Scotland website