Land Registration for the 21st Century

Current project status

• Initiation: Could include discussing scope and terms of reference with lead Government Department
• Pre-consultation: Could include approaching interest groups and specialists, producing scoping and issues papers, finalising terms of project
• Consultation: Likely to include consultation events and paper, making provisional proposals for comment
• Policy development: Will include analysis of consultation responses. Could include further issues papers and consultation on draft Bill
• Reported: Usually recommendations for law reform but can be advice to government, scoping report or other recommendations

This project is complete. Our recommendations were implemented in the Land Registration Act 2002

The report, Land Registration for the 21st Century: A Conveyancing Revolution, and accompanying draft Bill were the outcome of six years’ joint work by the Law Commission and HM Land Registry. The purpose of the Bill was to create the necessary legal framework in which registered conveyancing could be conducted electronically and make other changes to the substantive law that governed registered land.

The Bill derived from Land Registration for the 21st Century: A Consultative Document, published jointly by the Law Commission and HM Land Registry in 1998. In this consultative report we set out a wide range of proposals designed to make dealings in land much simpler, quicker and cheaper, and to make the title to registered land, and the rights in and over it, more secure.