Mark your territory

Be patient with your solicitors if they become a little grumpy around 13 October – they will be grappling with what is to be, in some respects, a completely new system of land registration.

Land registration does not enthral most lawyers, and it has a similarly thrilling effect on non-lawyers. Registering titles is something that your solicitors do after the deal has been done, and land and charge certificates are those rather annoying documents that no one can ever find.

All this is about to change, and every major landowner – including, of course, social landlords – needs to be aware of what is about to happen.

The Land Registration Act 2002 will come into force on 13 October this year, and lawyers will have to get used to new forms and new ways of dealing with the Land Registry.

No more certificates
Land and charge certificates are being abolished. A record of who owns what will be held electronically by the Land Registry, which will produce printouts of title but no actual documents needing to be kept in deeds storage. Lawyers are a bit nervous about this, fearing that electronic storage could go wrong, but the evidence of your title is going to be what the Land Registry has on its computers, not the land certificate sitting on your solicitor's desk. As existing land and charge certificates end up back in the Land Registry for various purposes, they are going to be shredded.

The Land Registry also plans to increase its scope. All leases of more than seven years will have to be registered. The idea of this is that the information held by the Land Registry about property holdings will be much more complete, but it will make dealing with short leases more complicated. Everyone will have to remember that there is an extra step in the process.

It will also add to the cost of short-term leasing, as there will be Land Registry fees to pay. We may be about to see a sudden rush of six-year leases.

Simply not wanting people to know what you have paid for a property will not be enough to get the information made confidential

All documents to be public
The Land Registry intends to make almost all information it holds available to members of the public who ask for it. However, because some matters are recognised as confidential, it will be possible to apply to the Land Registry for certain information to be excluded from availability to the public.

You may want to discuss with your solicitors whether there is anything in documents going to the Land Registry that you have a specific reason for wanting to make confidential. Simply not wanting people to know what you have paid for a property will not be enough to get it made confidential.

It will make sense to redesign some documentation. For example, sometimes the acquisition of a property is associated with a simultaneous transfer of staff, and the staffing details might be included in the documentation relating to the land transfer. With these new provisions it will be important to separate out, as much as possible, any confidential information into documents that do not need to be lodged with the Land Registry.

Tell the Land Registry your address
Last but not least, it is a little-known fact that when you move your registered office you are meant to tell the Land Registry so that it can change the address on the registered title. It is debatable whether anyone ever actually does this. In future, you will simply have to. Under the new provisions, there are a range of circumstances in which the Land Registry can write to you and if you do not reply you may lose rights. In particular, where adverse possession is concerned, the 2002 act changes radically the way in which squatters can acquire ownership. The new process could mean you lose title because you don't receive one letter sent to an out-of-date address.

You must therefore ensure that the Land Registry has your proper addresses – you can give a maximum of three. But whichever address it has, you need to be sure that letters from the Land Registry are dealt with swiftly.