Land Registration Act 2002

The Reform of Property Law and the Land Registration Act 2002: A Risk Assessment1

The Land Registration Act 2002 has been received with much critical acclaim, and rightly so. It is a work of monumental importance and monumental effort. Law Commission Report No. 2712 was itself the last in a long series of Reports discussing, proposing, rejecting and recommending changes to the fundamentals of the land registration system established by the Land Registration Act 1925.3 As is well known, the Act of 2002, which is now set for entry in to force on October 13 2003,4 is designed to revolutionise conveyancing in England and Wales and to bring the land registration system established by the 1925 Land Registration Act into the modern age.5 Indeed, in terms of its underlying rationale, the Act of 2002 shares much with its 1925 counterpart. Both were born of the recognition that the systems they were designed to replace were (and are) no longer suitable for the social and economic conditions of the time. The 1925 Act is still seen by some as an interloper, polluting the purity of the historic principles of

1

. This paper was given in this long form at the WG Hart Symposium, University of London, 2002. A

shorter version was published first in The Conveyancer and Property Lawyer, 2003.

2 3

. Land Registration for the Twenty-first Century: A Conveyancing Revolution (2001). . Two earlier Reports (Law Commission Reports No. 158 (1987) and 173 (1988)) were produced on the

Commission’s own initiative. Law Commission Report No. 235 (1995), leading to the Land Registration Act 1997, was the first written jointly with the Land Registry. The second joint Report, Land Registration for the Twenty-First Century (No. 254, 1998) formed the basis of much of the third joint report, No. 271, which contains final proposals and the draft of what is now the LRA 2002.

4

. See the Land Registration Act 2002 website at http://legislation.landreg.gov.uk. The rationale for...