HM Land Registry: how the register works, and how to protect what is yours
Every sale on Homebinding ends at the register. This section explains what the register is, how an application takes priority on the day list, what a notice or a restriction does, how an objection becomes a dispute before the tribunal, how a trust sits behind a title, how the frauds work and how to stop them, and where to go when a professional lets you down. The official practice guides read here in full under the Open Government Licence.
The register in plain words
What is registered
HM Land Registry keeps the register of title for land in England and Wales. Each title has three parts. The property register describes the land and the rights that go with it and refers to the title plan. The proprietorship register names the owner, the class of title and any restrictions on the owner's power to deal with the land. The charges register lists the mortgages, covenants, easements and other burdens. What the register says is what the law treats as the position, subject to the narrow grounds for alteration in the Land Registration Act 2002.
The day list and priority
Every application HM Land Registry receives is entered on the day list, its running record of pending applications against each title. Priority between competing applications runs from the time of entry on the day list, not from the time a document was signed. Before completion a buyer's solicitor makes an official search with priority; the result freezes the register in the buyer's favour for a priority period so that the transfer and the mortgage, lodged inside it, beat anything lodged later. The practice guides on searches and fees explain the mechanics.
Notices
A notice is an entry in the charges register recording that someone claims an interest in the land: an option, a lease, an equitable charge, a contract. An agreed notice is entered with the owner's consent or on evidence; a unilateral notice can be entered without the owner knowing, and the owner is told and can apply to cancel it. A notice does not prove that the interest is valid, only that it is claimed, and it protects the priority of the interest if it is valid. Practice guide 19 sets out every form and every rule.
Restrictions
A restriction is an entry in the proprietorship register that limits how the owner can deal with the land. It can stop any disposition being registered unless a named person consents, a certificate is given or a condition is met. The commonest is the Form A restriction, which appears when land is held on trust for more than one person or where a co owner's share is separate: it requires two trustees or a trust corporation to give a valid receipt for purchase money. A restriction can be applied for by anyone with a sufficient interest, on Form RX1; the owner is notified and can object, and a restriction applied for without reasonable cause makes the applicant liable in damages. Cancellation is on Form RX3, withdrawal on Form RX4.
Trusts behind the title
The register shows the legal owner, not who is entitled in equity. Where land is held on trust the beneficiaries' interests sit behind the title and are protected by the Form A restriction rather than by being written into the register. On a sale by two trustees the beneficial interests are overreached: they transfer to the proceeds of sale and the buyer takes free of them. That is why a single registered owner with a Form A restriction cannot sell alone, and why a second trustee is appointed to complete.
Objections, disputes and the tribunal
When an application is made, anyone affected may object. HM Land Registry cannot decide an objection that is not groundless: it must first give the parties the chance to negotiate, and if they cannot agree the matter is referred to the Land Registration division of the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber). The tribunal hears evidence, decides the dispute, can order rectification and can award costs. Its decisions are published and are the fullest record there is of everything that can go wrong with a title. Appeals go to the Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber).
Alteration, rectification and indemnity
The register can be altered to correct a mistake, bring it up to date or give effect to a right excepted from registration. Alteration that prejudicially affects a registered owner in possession is rectification, and it is only ordered against such an owner where they caused or substantially contributed to the mistake or it would be unjust not to alter. Where a person suffers loss because of a mistake, or because the register is rectified or not rectified, the state pays an indemnity. Schedules 4 and 8 to the Land Registration Act 2002 are the source.
Registering the sale to track every change
The sale is not finished at completion; it is finished when the transfer is registered and the register shows the buyer. Homebinding's transaction record holds the application through registration and checks the register afterwards, and the Property Alert service, free from HM Land Registry, sends an email whenever an application is lodged against a monitored title so that the owner sees any change the moment it happens.
The official guides, in full
The practice guides are the rule book HM Land Registry itself works to. They read here chapter by chapter, with the index beside the text, exactly as published. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
The land registration tribunal
Decisions of the Land Registration division are published by HM Courts and Tribunals Service; Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) decisions are on the National Archives' Find case law service and on BAILII. Homebinding's case library below links only to published decisions and judgments.
Property fraud, and how to stop it
Title fraud
A fraudster pretends to be the owner and sells or mortgages the property to an innocent third party, taking the money. Empty homes, rented homes, homes without a mortgage and owners who live abroad are the usual targets, because the owner is not there to notice. The register can be rectified and an indemnity paid, but that takes years and the stress is real.
Conveyancing email fraud
A criminal intercepts or spoofs the email between a buyer and a solicitor and changes the bank details for the deposit or the completion money. The money goes to the criminal's account and is moved on within hours. The defence is simple: bank details are confirmed by telephone on a number you already hold, never from an email, and Homebinding's transaction record shows the panel solicitor's verified account details rather than sending them by email.
What to do today
Sign up to Property Alert for every title you own; keep the contact details on the register current, with up to three addresses including an email address abroad; consider the counter fraud restriction that requires a conveyancer to certify your identity before a sale or mortgage is registered; and read the official guide below.
Holding the professionals to account
A conveyancer who misses a restriction, a valuer who does not inspect, an agent who takes a fee for nothing: each has a regulator, a complaints route and, where loss follows, a claim. The routes are these.
Solicitors
Complain to the firm first in writing; it must have a complaints procedure. If it is not resolved within eight weeks, the Legal Ombudsman deals with poor service and can order compensation. The Solicitors Regulation Authority deals with conduct: dishonesty, conflicts of interest, breaches of the SRA Standards and Regulations, and it can fine, restrict or strike off. Negligence causing loss is a claim in the courts, usually within six years of the loss, and every firm must carry professional indemnity insurance.
Barristers
The Bar Standards Board regulates barristers' conduct under the BSB Handbook and the Legal Ombudsman handles service complaints against them. A barrister who advises negligently can be sued like any other professional.
Surveyors and valuers
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors regulates its members and registered valuers under the Red Book and its Rules of Conduct. Complaints go to the firm, then to RICS or to an approved redress scheme; a negligent valuation is a claim in the courts.
Estate and letting agents
Every agent must belong to a government approved redress scheme, The Property Ombudsman or the Property Redress Scheme, and the schemes can award compensation. Trading Standards enforces the law on agents' fees, material information and banned practices.
HM Land Registry itself
HM Land Registry has its own complaints procedure and, beyond it, the Independent Complaints Reviewer and the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman through an MP. A mistake in the register is corrected by alteration, with an indemnity for loss.
Licensed conveyancers and legal executives
The Council for Licensed Conveyancers and CILEx Regulation regulate their members; the Legal Ombudsman covers service complaints against both.
The case library
The media report the rogue builder every week. The conveyancer who lets a restriction through, the valuer who never went inside, the agent who sold what was not theirs to sell: those stories sit in the law reports and the tribunal's decisions, and nowhere else. The case library gathers them so that a buyer or a seller can see what actually happens and how it was put right. Every entry links to the published decision or judgment it describes; nothing is entered on hearsay, and members' own experiences are told in their own words in the community, marked as such.
Where the decisions are
Land Registration division decisions on GOV.UK; Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) and court judgments on the National Archives' Find case law and on BAILII; Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal findings on its own site; Legal Ombudsman decisions in its published data. Each library entry carries the citation, the date, the issue, what went wrong, what the tribunal or court decided and what a buyer or seller can learn from it.
Send a case
If you have a published decision that belongs here, send the citation or the link and the agent will read it and write it up. If your experience is not yet in a judgment, tell it in the community: first person, dated, with the documents, and it stays your account.
Every Act and instrument How a sale works on Homebinding Ask your agent
Decided cases on registered land, restrictions and property fraud
The rules in the Land Registration Act 2002 show their teeth when someone has forged a signature, when the register says something untrue, or when two people believe they own the same house. The decisions below settled those questions for England and Wales, grouped by the problem they answer. Each entry gives the citation, what happened, what was decided, and what a buyer or seller takes from it.
This is not advice. Cases are summarised in outline and later decisions can change how an earlier one is read.
Forgery and identity fraud
The commonest serious property fraud is a real property, a real title number and an impostor in the owner's shoes, usually where the house is empty, tenanted or owned from abroad. These cases decide who bears the loss when the deception works.
Dreamvar (UK) Ltd v Mishcon de Reya; P&P Property Ltd v Owen White & Catlin LLP [2018] EWCA Civ 1082
Two appeals heard together. In each, a fraudster posed as the registered owner of an unoccupied London property and sold it. The money passed through solicitors on both sides, the impostor vanished, and no transfer could be registered because the true owner had signed nothing.
The Court of Appeal held the seller's solicitors liable on the basis on which they had acted, and held that the buyer's solicitors had the purchase money on trust for a completion that never lawfully occurred. Relief from liability for breach of trust was refused where the firm was insured and the buyer was not.
This is why a solicitor insists on a regulated identity check on the seller, and why funds should not be released on assurances alone.
Purrunsing v A'Court & Co [2016] EWHC 789 (Ch)
A man calling himself the owner of a vacant London plot instructed a small firm to sell it. Identity checks were thin, answers about the seller's connection to the property were incomplete, and the money was gone before the fraud surfaced.
Both firms were held liable, with the loss apportioned between them. Paying away completion money on a sale that was never genuine was a breach of trust, and failing to press obvious questions about the seller was negligent.
An empty property, an owner who cannot be met, a correspondence address that does not match the title: these are the warning signs a court expects a professional to act on.
Malory Enterprises Ltd v Cheshire Homes (UK) Ltd [2002] EWCA Civ 151
A company's derelict land was transferred away on a forged transfer executed by people with no authority, and the buyer was registered as proprietor. The true owner had kept the site fenced and in use.
The Court of Appeal held that the registered proprietor took the legal estate but the beneficial interest stayed with the true owner, whose occupation protected it against the new proprietor. The register was altered to restore the true owner.
Later decisions have narrowed the reasoning, but the practical point survives: a forged transfer does not become good because the registrar has processed it.
Swift 1st Ltd v Chief Land Registrar [2015] EWCA Civ 330
A lender advanced money on a charge over a house. The borrower's signature was forged by a relative, and the registered owner, in occupation throughout, had the charge removed. The lender claimed an indemnity from the registrar.
The Court of Appeal held the lender entitled to be indemnified. Removing the forged charge was a loss suffered by reason of rectification, even though the owner's occupation had made the charge vulnerable from the start.
Where a forgery is unwound, the party who loses out is usually compensated rather than left chasing a fraudster.
Mistakes on the register and the indemnity
A register that could never be corrected would be dangerous, and one correctable at will would be worthless. The Land Registration Act 2002 sits between the two: the register can be altered for a mistake, a proprietor in possession has protection, and an indemnity may follow.
NRAM Ltd v Evans [2017] EWCA Civ 1013
A lender's charge was discharged from the register on a mistaken belief that the loan had been redeemed and replaced. The property was later sold, and the lender applied to have its charge restored.
The Court of Appeal held the entry removing the charge was not a mistake in the relevant sense: the discharge was effective when made, even though given under a misapprehension. Alteration was refused.
The register generally means what it says on the day it is read, and a lender that discharges in error may have no route back.
Baxter v Mannion [2011] EWCA Civ 120
A man applied to be registered as proprietor of a field on ten years' adverse possession. The paper owner did not answer the notice in time and the applicant was registered. The owner then showed the possession claimed had never happened.
The Court of Appeal held the register could be altered to remove the registration. A procedural default did not create a right that never existed, so the entry was a correctable mistake.
Answer registry notices, but know that a registration obtained on an untrue factual basis is not beyond challenge afterwards.
Rashid v Nasrullah [2018] EWCA Civ 2685
A property was transferred by forgery, and the fraudster's registration stood for many years while he and his family remained in possession. The true owner's family later sought the property back.
The Court of Appeal held that a registered proprietor whose title arose from the forgery could not rely on the adverse possession provisions as argued, and the register was altered against him.
A long registration is not a cure for a fraudulent start. Age on the register is comfort, not proof.
Gold Harp Properties Ltd v MacLeod [2014] EWCA Civ 1084
Leases of roof space were determined by the freeholder in circumstances that could not stand, and new leases were granted to a connected company in the meantime. The question was whether the restored leases could recover their original priority.
The Court of Appeal held that the alteration power is wide enough to restore priority, so the reinstated interests ranked ahead of the later grants. Correcting the register can mean correcting the order as well as the entries.
Where a title has been rearranged shortly before a sale, the order of the entries deserves as much attention as their content.
Who owns the beneficial interest
A title register names the legal owners. It does not always tell you who owns the value. A Form A restriction records that the land is held on a trust of land under the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996. It does not decide who owns what and it does not name the beneficiaries. It tells a buyer how capital money must be paid.
Stack v Dowden [2007] UKHL 17
An unmarried couple bought a house in joint names without declaring their shares, having kept their finances notably separate over a long relationship and contributed unequally.
The House of Lords held that where a family home is in joint names the starting point is joint beneficial ownership, but that presumption can be displaced by evidence of a different common intention. Here the shares were not equal.
A declaration of trust at purchase is worth its modest cost. Silence at the outset leaves the question to a court years later.
Jones v Kernott [2011] UKSC 53
A couple bought in joint names, separated, and one then paid the mortgage and outgoings alone for many years while the other bought elsewhere. Neither recorded any change to their shares.
The Supreme Court held that a common intention as to shares can change over time, and where it cannot be deduced from conduct the court may impute the shares that are fair on the whole course of dealing.
A written record of what was agreed at separation, and of who paid what afterwards, is valuable evidence.
Marr v Collie [2017] UKPC 17
A couple bought a number of properties in joint names, some said to be investments rather than homes, and disputed how the beneficial interest should be determined.
The Privy Council held that the family home approach is not confined by a rigid label. Where property is bought in joint names the parties' actual intentions govern, whether the purchase was domestic, commercial or mixed.
Small investors buying jointly need the same protection as couples: shares recorded in writing at purchase.
Occupation and overreaching
An interest that is not on the register can still bind a buyer if the person holding it is in actual occupation. The counterweight, drawn from the Law of Property Act 1925, is overreaching: pay the purchase money to two trustees and the beneficial interests lift off the land and attach to the money.
Williams & Glyn's Bank Ltd v Boland [1981] AC 487
A husband was sole registered owner of the family home. His wife had contributed to the purchase and lived there. He mortgaged the house without telling her, and the lender sought possession when the loan was not paid.
The House of Lords held that the wife's beneficial interest, coupled with her actual occupation, was an overriding interest binding on the lender. Living in the house was occupation.
This is why enquiries ask who else lives at a property and why adult occupiers sign consents.
City of London Building Society v Flegg [1988] AC 54
Parents contributed to the purchase of a house held in the names of their daughter and son in law, and lived there. The two registered owners mortgaged the property without the parents' knowledge.
The House of Lords held that because the advance was paid to two trustees the parents' interests were overreached. Their rights transferred to the money, leaving the charge good against the land.
The contrast with Boland is the number of trustees, which is exactly what a Form A restriction polices.
Scott v Southern Pacific Mortgages Ltd [2014] UKSC 52
Owners in financial difficulty sold their homes to a company under a sale and rent back scheme, promised they could stay on as tenants. The company bought with mortgage finance, later defaulted, and the lenders sought possession.
The Supreme Court held that the promises came from a buyer who did not yet own the property, so nothing capable of binding the lender arose between acquisition and charge.
Anyone offered a quick sale with a right to remain should take independent advice before signing.
How to read a decision
Modern judgments carry a neutral citation, a court reference independent of any publisher, reading as year, court and number. EWCA Civ is the Court of Appeal, Civil Division. EWHC is the High Court with the division in brackets, so [2016] EWHC 789 (Ch) is Chancery Division. UKSC is the Supreme Court, UKHL the House of Lords before 2009, UKPC the Privy Council. Older references such as [1981] AC 487 are law report citations, giving the series and the page where the report begins.
The shape of a judgment is consistent: facts, issues, reasoning, disposal. Where several judges give judgments, the one the others agree with carries the reasoning.
Two free sources hold the full text. Find Case Law at the National Archives is the official public archive of judgments and holds modern material. BAILII is the long standing free database and reaches further back. Search by party name or paste the neutral citation.
Check whether a later decision has revisited the case. Some entries above have been qualified by judgments that came afterwards, which is why a summary is a starting point rather than an answer.
This library grows from published decisions only. Nothing is added unless the judgment exists in the public record with the citation given.
How the site handles this
Every property record on Homebinding carries a title section for the tenure, the title number where the owner supplies it, and any restriction noted on the register, with a free text field for the entry as worded. Where a record shows a Form A restriction, it prompts for confirmation that capital money will be paid to two trustees. Fraud risk fields flag the features these cases turn on: an unoccupied property, an owner living overseas, a correspondence address differing from the property, and a recent change of registered proprietor.
Sources: HM Land Registry, the National Archives Find Case Law service, BAILII, and the text of the Land Registration Act 2002, the Law of Property Act 1925 and the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996 as published on legislation.gov.uk.
