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Land Law Essay - Unregistered Land and the Land Registration Act.
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A land law essay on unregistered Land and the Land Registration Act.
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‘Compared to the system of unregistered land with its obvious deficiencies, the Land RegistrationAct 2002 was designed to deliver a simple and modern scheme for registered land. Yet, in key
respects, the 2002 legislation fails to deliver on its stated aims.’
Explore this statement with reference to relevant case law, statute and academic commentary.
This essay aims to defend the position that the impact of the Land Registration Act 2002 (hereinafter
LRA2002) is a drastic improvement on the obvious deficiencies related to unregistered land and
previous statutes governing the registered system, providing a simplified and modern scheme.
Whilst there are questions regarding the certainty of the system, comprehensively the LRA2002 has
achieved a delivery on its stated aims, so far as it was possible to do so, valuing contextualised
justice over codification and absolute certainty.
This essay will first outline the obvious deficiencies of unregistered land which led to the enactment
of the various Land Registration Acts. The stated aims of the LRA2002 will then be summarised
before analysing to what extent it successfully delivers on the aims to achieve total registration,
minimise the impact of overriding interests and reduce the ‘registration gap’ by implementing e-
conveyancing.
The deficiencies of unregistered land
Under the system of unregistered land, there is no register of title, rather land is registered under
the owner’s name. Subsequently, there are some obvious deficiencies with this system as a result of
the doctrine of notice and the principle of universal enforceability. The effectiveness of the system
depends on registration against the correct name and searches being undertaken against the correct
name. If an incorrect name is searched against, no interests will be revealed but it will be binding
, against that person (Oak Co-operative Building Society v Blackburn [1968]). However, if a purchaser
searches against the correct name, but the land has been registered under an incorrect name it will
not bind the purchaser (Diligent v Alleyne [1972]). Due to the unpredictability arising from the
unregistered land regime, the registered land system is title-based, aiming to bring all unregistered
land under its scope and be accessible on an electronic register that is managed by the Land Registry
and is currently regulated by the LRA2002.
The aims of the Land Registration Act 2002
The LRA2002 offers a comprehensive statutory framework for dealings with registered titles, which is
said to be guided by Ruoff’s three foundational principles: the mirror, curtain and insurance principles.
The statute was originally enacted to resolve the deficiencies with the Land Registration Act 1925,
described as “badly drafted and lacking in clarity” (Bevan, 2022), maintaining its core principles whilst
replacing it with a contemporary, strengthened and simplified scheme for title registration,
“eliminat[ing] complexity and uncertainty in conveyancing” (Law Commission, 2018). The legislation
achieves major reform in being accessible and largely free from undisclosed interests, however, as
the landscape in which it was enacted has changed drastically with technology not having developed
as predicted (Law Commission, 2018), e-conveyancing has not been achieved, though the Act
succeeds in delivering on the rest of its stated aims comprehensively.
Firstly, the LRA2002 aimed to make categories of ‘triggering events’ bringing unregistered land into the
registered system more expansive. This was achieved by enacting ‘triggers’ via section 4 of the Act to
initiate first registration, successfully increasing the number of circumstances where a duty is imposed
to register land with its transfer becoming void if an individual fails to act. As a result, more
unregistered land is being brought under the registered system, moving towards the underlying goal of
‘total registration’, eliminating the aforementioned deficiencies of unregistered land whilst creating
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