Title plan changes and access

solanum55

Our house is situated about 100 metres from the public highway and we have to cross third party land along an established private lane to access our house. When we bought our house in 2014 the various title deed plans available were poor quality but seemed clear that the land across which we travel for access was on one title deed on which we have a clear entitlement to access along this lane.

However, recent activity to try and develop some land in this area has lead to copies of the new modern digital Land Registry maps being circulated and to our surprise they indicate that the people from whom we bought our house own a section of the access lane. This seems to be completely at odds with the position that the old title deed plans indicated. To our surprise the third party owners of the lane seem to have accepted this change of ownership and the loss of their land! We guess that is up to them and not our problem but it does mean it leaves us with no formal access statement over the strip of land owned by the former owners of our house, which nobody, including Land Registry, seemed to know existed when we bought our house! Thankfully the title deed plans for our own house and garden seem to be spot on with no problems.

There is no problem with our access, everyone seems to fully accept that our house has full access and has had for many years but we are concerned that if current plans for development in the area go ahead a new owner /developer could challenge our access and we do feel somewhat vulnerable. We have put all this to our solicitor and are waiting for a reply but we would be interested if anyone else has a view on this. Essentially there has been a significant change of title deed plans between the old fashioned paper copies and the new Digital Land Registry plans and this has a material effect on the access covenants applicable to our property. As this change does not affect our own title deed plans there does not seem to be a mechanism to raise this with Land Registry even though it does affect our access rights. We would be interested in any thoughts you may have on this situation?

moneyistooshorttomention

Have you got diagrams you could put up of:

- the way things really are
- the way they appear to be now

LadyDee

OP - you could well find that there is an established right of access if that access has been in continuous use for at least 20 years, which it sounds as though it might have been from your description of old LR deeds. Just as well to get it registered now to avoid any future problems.

LadyDee

OP - check out the following link https://www.cartmells.co.uk/no-written-right-of-access-over-land-dont-panic/

G_M

The detail in your post is a bit confusing, but the crux seems to be (please correct me!):

* part of the lane you use for access is owned by a 3rd party (your previous owers) and
* there is no recorded right of access along this section of the lane

In your position, I would seek to get your access rights recorded by the LR.

If the 3rd party involved are friendly/amenable, the simplest option is to draw up a Deed granting you (and your visitors) pedestrian and vehicular access across their section of lane.

That Deed then gets recorded againt both your, and their, LR Titles.

There would be a cost for a solicitor to draw up the Deed (though you could DIY), possibly a cost for their solicitor to check it (depending whether they require this or are willing to trust your solictor), and a minmal cost to register the Deed at the LR. You should offer to pay all these costs.

Of course, if the 3rd party demands a payment for granting you this right, then you have to weigh up that cost against the hassle of claiming the right in other ways (eg Prescriptive Right of Access). Indeed, they may have deliberately kept back ownership of the land in questtion for just this reason.........

AdrianC

solanum55 wrote: »

When we bought our house in 2014 the various title deed plans available were poor quality

However, recent activity to try and develop some land in this area has lead to copies of the new modern digital Land Registry maps being circulated

The LR have not updated their entire mapping, for every single title, in the last four years.

I'd be very surprised if they've been updated in that time, or even since the title was registered.

Essentially there has been a significant change of title deed plans between the old fashioned paper copies and the new Digital Land Registry plans

Compulsory registration was in place decades before you purchased in 2014.

Reading between the lines, then, I'm guessing that...
Your buyers had been there decades. You bought unregistered, and completed the first registration. So the maps that are there now are the ones that the title was registered on by your solicitor. Why did this not come up at the time?

solanum55

Hello,
Thank you for your comments.
I am reluctant to put copies of our title deed plans on a public web-site. What I would say is that these days and since at least 2013, when you conduct a property transfer Land Registry issue an official digitally produced copy of title plan.
In 2005 this was not done in the current format. Sometime between 2005 and 2013 the Land Registry changed to their current format of digital 'Official copy of title plan' maps.
Our problem is that there is a significant difference between the earlier (2005 or earlier) style of title deed plans and the current style of official copy of title plans.
Presumably at some stage Land Registry started putting all the old paper map copies etc. onto their current digital system? It seems it was at this stage that some problem occured in this area and the current Official digital copies of title plan do not match the original title deed paper plans. If this affected our own title deed plans we would have the right of redress with Land Registry however, the plans for our property are fine. Our problem is that this change in the plans, which the people concerned seem disinclined to challenge, do affect our vehicle access rights.

I hope this makes sense?

troffasky

solanum55 wrote: »

I am reluctant to put copies of our title deed plans on a public web-site.

Bear in mind that any old idiot can download them from the LR for a nominal fee.

Tom99

troffasky wrote: »

Bear in mind that any old idiot can download them from the LR for a nominal fee.

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Providing they have the address or location which, at the moment, any old idiot does not have.[/FONT]

Land_Registry

I'm unclear as to whether you are referring to title plans and deed plans or just the former. If it's the former then the assumption made is incorrect in its apparent inference that 'old paper map copies' were changed in some way. If I've misunderstood though then apologies.

Old title plans don't change unless an application is submitted that requires a new title plan to be created. So the vast majority of old title plans were scanned and made available electronically. It's very unlikely it was remapped to enable this to happen as it's simply a scanning process

The devil will be in the detail though re both the right and how important the title plan is and that woukd really start with your own titke details. I'm guessing the right may lack specifics re where the right exists and the change of titke plan elsewhere plus the other apparently newly mapped title does not mention but that is purely guesswork of course.

There's always a mechanism to raise it if your own title does not confirm the right (not covenants?) in the way you expected. Either raise an Enquiry or make an application

But if your title has not been changed then i suspect neither woukd be appropriate at this stage as it's really legal advice you need re what rights your title has and whether they are sufficient for your needs and how the change to another titke has impacted

If they are not then as others have posted the granting of new rights or claiming of new ones are probably the way to go.

solanum55

Thank you for these comments, I have drawn a plan to help explain all this, I have it as a scanned jpeg image but for the life of me I cannot get it to attach to a message on this forum site?

Oh well any way to sum up;

In 2005 there was a property transfer this was accompanied by an old fashioned paper title deed plan. The land transferred had a boundary bordering our property and we have title deed rights to access across this land, all hunky dory no problem.

In 2013 their was recourse to the land registry due to the need to attach finance charge information to their title deeds. This resulted in new digital format Official Copy of title deed plans being produced which show this boundary to have moved to the East which has created a strip of land between our house and the land over which we have an access agreement.

So we have 2005 title deed plans showing a boundary in one place and a 2013 Official Copy of title plan showing the boundary as being in a significantly different place. Nobody else seems to be bothered about this apart from us as it creates a strip over which we do not have any obvious access rights. We could just keep quiet but there are plans to sell some of this land and build houses and so we feel we ought to resolve this matter. In our view it would be unwise to approach the owners of the land about this, they think our access is all OK and it is probably best if they stay thinking that way for now.

So I guess we have 4 options?
1. Apply for prescriptive access as there is evidence of 20 years of use, although this does give the owners the opportunity to object.

2. Lodge a complaint or query with Land Registry as the boundary has been changed to our disadvantage.

3. Claim that although the boundary has changed, our access agreement extends over all the land to our house, as per the 2005 deeds.

4. Take a risk and ask the owners for a formal access agreement, they would probably want lot of money to do this.

I guess option 3 is the best bet but it would need a good property lawyer to know if this was a line worth taking?