Land registration in England

One of the oldest land records was compiled in England -the famous Domesday Survey, completed in 1086. The Domesday Book, a record of information collected for the levying of taxes, was remarkable for its time - a kind of cadastre without map. However, the Domesday Survey was unique and was never reviewed or maintained. There has never been a cadastre, in the European sense, in England or in those countries that adopted English traditions.

Further we shall, therefore, discuss mainly the development and the present state of the legal land registration system.

In English legal theory only the sovereign can own land. In the eyes of the law a private person can thus be nothing more than a tenant on the land. A lease may be defined as a contract granting the exclusive right to possession of land for a fixed or determinable period. There is no legal limit to the term of years. Leases for 999 years are common, but the majority of leases are likely to be considerably shorter. A special type of lease is the building lease: the lessee leases vacant land for which he pays a ground rent agreeing in addition to erect a building on the site according to certain specifications. A typical building lease is for 99 years.

Many attempts were made to establish registration to make land conveyance both simpler and more secure. But such attempts never really suc­ceeded. In 1925, however, a package of new land laws was enacted. One of these was the Land Registration Act, which made registration of titles compulsory within designated areas. These areas were gradually extended so that today all of England is covered. Registration is, however, still sporadic since properties are registered only when the land is sold or subject to a long lease.

Land registration in Australia

English law and English practices exerted, of course, a great influence upon those countries settled or dominated by Britain. However, the legislation introduced by Sir Robert Torrens in 1858 was even more important. This registration system - usually called the Torrens system - is fundamentally a title register. It applied to all land alienated by the Crown after the introduction of the Transfer of Land Act developed by Torrens. The main principles are pre­sented below.

Two grants are issued for each piece of land at the first registration, one is called the original, the other the duplicate. The original Crown grant is held by the Office of Titles in the Register book which is open to the public, and the duplicate is issued to the grantee.

A main feature of the Torrens system is thus that the land in question is identified on a map appended to the certificate of title and that the certificate of title gives details of ownership as well as a description of the land. All transfers must be applied for, examined, and registered at the Office of Titles. This mandatory requirement is an important feature of the Torrens system, for the Crown can thus guarantee the new ownership. Guar­antees are supported by an insurance fund, which, however, has rarely been used.

The Torrens system does not cover land granted before the system was legally established. For such old land grants, registration is voluntary. There­fore two systems still exist side by side in Australian states.

The Torrens system in itself does not produce cadastral maps for large areas, only maps of individual properties. During the 1970s, however, the focus in Australia changed to cadastral mapping. The 1980s saw the beginning of the creation of digital cadastral databases.

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 862