Planning to succeed
by Roger Buston
You are acting for the purchaser of an unregistered property. Joy.
Notwithstanding that the property and its boundaries may be as plain as a pikestaff 'on the ground', (and you have inspected it, of course...), sadly, the root of title only contains (at best) a hand-drawn plan of dubious accuracy and parentage by which the property can be identified. Oh dear.
Of course, we now all know by heart the intricacies of the British Standard for construction drawing practice (BS 1192, Part 3), and the requirements for colourings and markings on Land Registry (LR) title plans. We have all read the LR's helpful 'Plans guidance card' and 'Practice Guide 40 - Land Registry Plans'.
And if you haven't, you should!
No doubt, we have all, by now, had plans rejected by the LR upon application for compulsory first registration, where, even with our best efforts, and even though the plans look perfectly acceptable (often having been prepared by a surveyor), they still do not seem to fulfill the criteria. How do we deal with this ?
The first port of call is to make an application, under LR form SIM, for an official search of the index map. Sometimes, unexpectedly and wonderfully, the search results in the LR kindly sending an extract of the Ordnance Survey (OS) , both to scale and compliant. Job done (as, indeed, those of us old enough to remember will recall, it used to be in the good old days…).
More often than not, however, the bald reply received is to the effect that the land is unregistered. No Plan. No Joy.
In this case, the second port of call is to phone your trusty local surveyor and instruct him (at great expense to your client ) to prepare a scale plan, compliant with BS 1192 Part 3, and so on.
Armed with this plan (and the surveyor's bill paid), you approach the LR for approval of it. Joy if it is accepted. Misery if it is not. Sometimes, nonetheless, such misery is accompanied by unexpected salvation in the form of, now, and at this late stage, (and after your client has paid the, no doubt, very reasonable surveyor's fee - which, in itself, is probably as much as you are charging for the whole job), a compliant extract of the OS. Miracle of miracles!
However, if your plan is not approved, and no OS compliant plan is supplied, you have to go back to your trusty surveyor, and go through the whole process again (and again) , until it finally is…
The final hurdle is resubmitting the plan to the LR for approval (possibly substituting the plan HMLR have now thoughtfully supplied!) - once this is approved, a Registry letter indicating such approval is kindly supplied, so that you can produce with your Registration Application AP 1. Result.
Lessons learnt:
- Ensure you get both your contract and transfer plan(s) (using the LR's TR forms) approved by the LR before you exchange contracts in the purchase. Neither your client nor the seller is going to be too keen to lay out more monies in paying your additional costs to sort out the plans problems after completion, let alone pay your friendly surveyor.
- Try to send the best copy plan you can with your SIM form.
- Continue to lobby the OS (to whom your firm has no doubt paid the necessary licence fee) and the LR to achieve a service level agreement (SLA) between them, whereby the LR might simply send compliant extract plans to solicitors when requested – on the basis that they are a precursor to a compulsory first registration application (as, indeed, they used to, in the good old, bad old days...).