Land Registration in UK Law

There is a gap between any transaction and its registration. Until registration, the purchaser (and indeed the mortgagee) have only equitable interests. This might suggest that rights granted by the purchaser to an occupier could not be "fed" until registration. Her interest is of a different order from that of a purchaser before completion, who has the contractual right to have the property conveyed to her but may never in fact get it.

The reality is that, in the vast majority of cases, the acquisition of the legal estate and the charge are not only precisely simultaneous but indissolubly bound together.

It was not a case on the effect of first registration nor was it a case of concurrent registrations. It was a case of a purported disposition of registered land that was held not to affect the beneficial ownership of the land, because of the fraud of the transferor. It was held that only the bare legal title passed to the transferee, who was registered as proprietor.

The exception just mentioned consists of "overriding interests" listed in section 70. In my opinion therefore, the law as to notice as it may affect purchasers of unregistered land, whether contained in decided cases, or in a statute (the Conveyancing Act 1882, section 3, Law of Property Act, section 199) has no application even by analogy to registered land.

The purpose, in each system, is the same, namely, to safeguard the rights of persons in occupation, but the method used differs. In the case of unregistered land, the purchaser's obligation depends upon what he has notice of—notice actual or constructive. In the case of registered land, it is the fact of occupation that matters. If there is actual occupation, and the occupier has rights, the purchaser takes subject to them.

Unlike section 5, which deals with first registration, that registered estate is not vested in Cheshire "together with all rights, privileges and appurtenances…." Moreoever, since the transfer to Cheshire could not in law be of any effect in itself, in my judgment it cannot constitute a "disposition" of the rear l andand accordingly section 20 cannot apply. In those circumstances, Cheshire's status as registered proprietor is subject to the rights of Malory BVI as beneficial owner.

In the case of unregistered land, and in the days before registration became the norm, such a result could no doubt be justified as avoiding protracted uncertainty where the title to land lay. But where land is registered it is difficult to see any justification for a legal rule which compels such an apparently unjust result, and even harder to see why the party gaining title should not be required to pay some compensation at least to the party losing it.