Land Registry Query delaying sale

Sarahwhitt84

We are in the process of purchasing a property and should have completed weeks ago, however there is an ongoing query with the boundary line of the property. It stops just short of the end of the driveway. The current owners have lived in the property for over 20 years and don't have the original deeds but claim the driveway has always been like this.
It is believed it may be an error and so has been left with the land registry to deal with. 4 weeks on and the vendors solicitors claim they are getting no response from Land Registry. Is there a time frame they should adhere to for such queries?
Any advice anyone can offer would be greatly received as we are no worried that the buyers of our our property will pull out due to the length of time this is taking
Thanks

Davesnave

Probably no one here works at the Land Registry, except the Land Registry's Rep, whose thread is the third down below the sticky at present.

I believe there may be some way of speeding things up if a sale is involved and the matter is mission critical, but the LR rep is the person to advise here, not me!

G_M

The Land Registry reps here generally respond Mon - Fri.

As well as monitoring the dedicated thread Davesnave refers to, they also search for threads with the words 'Land registry' so I'm sure you'll get an answer from them tomorrow (Mon).

But it sounds like your sellers either need to make a claim for Adverse Possession, or convince the LR that the additional land has always been part of their Title.

Do you know which thy are doing?

AdrianC

If they've lived there 20yrs, then I presume this land is currently registered? If so, how do the LR plans compare with what's "believed" to be the reality? And if there's any kind of substantial difference, why did they not raise it with their solicitor when they purchased?

Land_Registry

important to know whether they have simply queried the position or applied to register the 'extra land'. I suspect, if you say they have heard nothing, it's the latter as we do have a backlog of this type of work currently

In my experience, if it's been that way fir this long then it's likely to need a formal application to register. Rarely any issue with that where it's only going to be land used/claimed by a single property but the wait time between receipt and consideration can be lengthy.

As mentioned that timeframe can be shortened if there's a confirmed buyer

Happy to take a look if you email us at customer.service@landregistry.gov.uk with the details