ABSTRACT
ANSWER Prior to 1 January 1926, the conveyancing system in England and Wales was under considerable strain. On the one hand, purchasers of land were faced with many difficulties when trying to establish whether any other person had rights or interests in that land and, on the other, an owner of an equitable interest in that land might find that the interest was destroyed by a simple sale to a purchaser who was unaware of its existence. To meet both of those problems, it was decided to move towards full title registration wherein all titles and many interests in land would be recorded and guaranteed by the state. It was recognised, however, that this mammoth task had to proceed in stages and that a set of transitional provisions was needed. The result was the LCA 1925 (now the LCA 1972), which was intended to operate for only some 30 years. Unfortunately, it was not until 1 December 1990 that all land in England and Wales became subject to compulsory first registration and the fact that universal title registration is still a little way off means that a certain amount of unregistered conveyancing will remain with us for a while yet.
