Registration of personal covenants

HM Land Registry have recently announced that they are simplifying their approach to the registration of personal covenants.

The change took effect on 13^th November 2024.  From that date, when an application is made to enter personal covenants in the register, a new form of entry will be made in the following format:

This entry will be made in all cases where there is a positive or indemnity covenant.

This change has been made to increase efficiency and accessibility for customers – the deed in question will be available for immediate download.

There are limitations to this change. Where the purpose of the entry relates to matters within a deed other than personal covenants or indemnities (such as restrictive covenants), this type of entry will not be made.

In respect of existing registers, the change will only be effected upon application. Similarly, applications made and processed before 13 November 2024 may not expect the new form of entry.

Land Registry Requisitions

As Local Government property colleagues will be well aware, the process of dealing with Land Registry applications can be very lengthy and less than straightforward. 

The Land Registry is under pressure to process applications quickly and efficiently and has recently issued details of the number and types of requisitions that it commonly encounters.  It has announced that more than 600,000 requisitions were sent from October 2023 to September 2024.  A high level of requisitions relate to just a few types of avoidable errors.

A large proportion of requisitions are issued in relation to what HMLR terms as “avoidable errors”. These include, for example, missing plans, missing consent documentation, or a missing date on a document.  While these are errors that are relatively easy and cheap for an individual conveyancer to deal with, taken together they result in high costs for the property industry as a whole.

The table below demonstrates the (rounded) figures of requisitions issued by HMLR in relation to a (non-exhaustive) list of easily avoidable errors.

The Land Registry estimates that these requisitions delay registration of transactions by around 15 working days.  This has a knock-on effect, causing delays to the registration of other transactions.

The Land Registry has urged those working in the property industry to make an active effort to ensure that data supplied on initial application for registration is accurate and complete.

Conveyancers play a key role in contributing to a significant number of requisitions and resulting delays.  So, while we all groan about the length of time that applications are currently taking to be processed, it is well worth taking that extra five minutes to carry out a final “sanity check” review to ensure that Land Registry applications are accurate and complete before submitting.

How Capsticks can help

With extensive knowledge of property law and practice, our team of specialist Local Government property lawyers are always on hand to support you with all aspects of the process of property transactions, including HMLR applications.  If you would like to discuss or have any queries as to the content of this article please contact Vicki Moore.