Updating The Land Registration Act 2002 ' What Reforms Can We Expect?

• Published date: 04 November 2021
• Law Firm: Gatehouse Chambers
• Author: Joshua Griffin

Joshua Griffin discusses the Government's response to the Law Commission's project on Updating the Land Registration Act 2002. He worked on the final stages of the project as a research assistant in 2017-2018.

On 24 July 2018, the Law Commission published its Report, Updating the Land Registration Act 2002 (Law Com No 380) which made 53 recommendations for reform covering a broad range of discrete issues, along with a draft Bill which would implement those recommendations.

Almost three years later, the Government published its full response on 25 March 2021. Overall, the response was positive, with the Government accepting a total of 40 of the Law Commission's recommendations. It rejected 3 recommendations outright and concluded that it needed to consider the remaining 10 recommendations further.

This article shall summarise the recommendations that were accepted by Government, since they are therefore likely to become law at some point. However, it is not clear when these recommendations will be implemented; the fact that the Government will be considering 10 of the Law Commission's recommendations further suggests that this will, unfortunately, be later rather than sooner.

The introduction of a new statutory duty of care on conveyancers

This recommendation is to introduce a new statutory duty of care on conveyancers to verify the identity of their clients. The aim of this recommendation is to reduce registered title fraud. This type of fraud occurs when a fraudster impersonates the owner of registered land, and purports to sell that land to an innocent purchaser.

Of course, conveyancers are already under legal and professional obligations to verify their client's identity. The current regimes of identity checks are not uniform in their application, however, and are not aimed at tackling emerging types of identity fraud.

The new statutory duty of care would be clear and limited in its scope. HMLR would, following consultation, set out the steps that must be taken to verify a client's identity and, importantly, would have the power to update those steps to tackle emerging identity fraud. A conveyancer who followed those specified steps would discharge their duty, even if fraud were to occur. HMLR would only have a right of course against the small minority of conveyancers who did not follow the required steps to verify their client's identity.

The Government's response indicates an intention to widen this duty beyond conveyancers to include individuals...