The Land Registry has made a minor change to its practice on registering easements (Land Registry Practice Guide 62). When registering an easement expressly granted or reserved out of a registered title, in a case where the appropriate registration requirements for the easement were not met, the Land Registry would add a note to the register in the following form:
“NOTE: The grant or reservation of the rights… has not been completed by registration in accordance with section 27 of the Land Registration Act 2002 and so does not operate at law.”
However, the Land Registry has announced that this note is no longer added. The Land Registry is concerned that the absence of the note may have led practitioners to believe in the past that the grant had been properly completed by registration – which might not have been the case. Instead, practitioners must carry out their own enquiries on the dominant and servient titles to establish whether the appropriate registration requirements in relation to the easement have been met. This is important since, where the easement is a registrable disposition (see section 27(2) Land Registration Act 2002), if the appropriate registration requirements are not met, the easement does not have effect at law as a legal easement.