ABSTRACT
Land lawyers in England and Wales fall into two broad groups. First, there are those who believe that the 1925 property legislation and, specifically the 1925 and 2002 Land Registration Acts (LRA), established a new machinery for controlling the creation and transfer of land but did not radically alter the nature of property law. Thus, some textbooks will explain in detail the nature of, say, easements or mortgages and add a section at the end of each chapter on the implications of ‘registered land’. Others take the view that the system of registered conveyancing has produced fundamental changes in the nature of the rights and interests falling within the concept of ‘land law’. Thus, on this view, a detailed understanding of the mechanics of registered land is necessary before a student can fully appreciate substantive property concepts such as easements or mortgages. There is, of course, merit in both views, but even without the powerful theoretical arguments that could be used, there are practical advantages for the student in following the second approach. Since 1 December 1990, all of England and Wales has been designated as an area of compulsory registration of title and it is now estimated that over 80 per cent of all potentially registrable titles are in fact registered. In the fullness of time, therefore, unregistered conveyancing will all but disappear from the legal landscape and this process has been speeded up by the entry into force of the LRA 2002 on 13 October 2003. In fact, the LRA 2002 operates on the fundamental assumption that registered land is intrinsically different from land of unregistered title. Moreover, and more importantly for students, examiners set problem questions which require the answer to explain how easements or mortgages, or whatever, operate in registered land and no amount of pre-1925 property law will solve these puzzles. There is, for example, no point in discussing the ‘doctrine of notice’ in registered land when it is entirely irrelevant.
