News In Focus
26 February 2010
Time for overhaul of land registration, says Commission
Scotland's land registration system, introduced 30 years ago, is due an overhaul inthe light of experience with its operation, according to the Scottish Law Commission which today published its Report on Land Registration.
Today about 60% of titles in Scotland are in the Land Register, introduced under the Land Registration (Scotland) Act 1979. The new system has been a great improvement over the old Register of Sasines
(set up in 1617), but unsurprisingly, the Commission says, the legislation was not free from shortcomings.
Its comprehensive review of the legislation, supported by the Registers of Scotland, has resulted in the following main recommendations:
- The process of getting all land in Scotland into the new register should be accelerated. The objective is 100% coverage.
- The law should be changed to allow all conveyancing documents to be in electronic form.
- There should be new rules to minimise delays in the registration process.
- The obstacles often placed by the current law often places in the way of rectifying the register even though it can be demonstrated that there is an inaccuracy should be removed.
- A system of "advnce notices" should be introduced to provide better protection for buyers against last-minute adverse entries affecting the title.
- There should be a new system for ensuring that buyers get a good title to common areas in new housing developments.
- New rules about the law of prescriptive possession should be introduced to ensure that longstanding registered rights are not capable of being challenged.
- New rules are needed about the registering of claims to seemingly ownerless land.
Professor George Gretton, the lead Commissioner on the project, said: "It is hardly surprising that such a revolutionary change did not get everything 100% right. We have reviewed the problems that have emerged, we have consulted extensively, and we have studied the land registration systems of other countries. Our recommendations build on the achievements of the 1979 Act. We believe that once our recommendations have been enacted, Scotland will have one of the world's best systems of land registration law."
An article by Professor Gretton descibing the recommendations in more detail will appear in the March edition of the Journal.