From 30 June 2014, the Land Registry has stopped requiring original documents to be sent to it when applying by post to change the register of a registered property. The Land Registry only requires certified copies of deeds or documents to be sent in with Land Registry application forms. The Land Registry’s prescribed forms have been altered so that margin notes now make this change of practice clear:
“We only need certified copies of deeds or documents you send to us with Land Registry application forms. Once we have made a copy of the documents you send to us, they will be destroyed; this applies to both originals and certified copies.”
The new approach does not apply to first registration applications where original documents will still need to be supplied.
Note:
- A certified copy of a document is not necessarily one that has been certified as a copy by a solicitor. The Land Registry’s FAQ section states that “A certified copy is a copy of a document which the applicant, a conveyancer [or] someone signing on the applicant’s behalf has certified is a true copy of the original document.”
- Conveyancers need to take care not to lose original documents through this new procedure. If originals are sent in, they will be destroyed after the Land Registry has taken a copy. Conveyancers should adopt the practice of always sending certified copy documents and retaining originals with the file. This is particular the case where the document in question bears an original signature. For mortgage deeds, lenders’ conveyancers should check with their clients what practice the lender adopts as regards retention of the original mortgage deed.
- One consequence of this change of practice is that the Land Registry will be less alert to the (questionable) practice of affixing pre-signed execution pages to engrossments of deeds (the so-called Mercury Tax point: see R (on the application of Mercury Tax Group Limited) v HMRC [2008] EWHC 2721 (Admin)). It had been understood that the Land Registry would reject an application for the registration of a dispositionary document if the document did not bear a “wet-ink” signature, or if it appeared to have been assembled after the execution page had been signed. Its ability to do this where only a certified copy is supplied is therefore weakened.