Voluntary Registration puts the landowner in charge of the process

You don’t need to wait for compulsory registration, says Rikka Wilkinson

Significant changes took place in the world of Scottish land registration in 2014. There are two property registers in Scotland. The Sasine Register was established in 1617 and is a record of title deeds relating to a particular property. The Land Register was introduced in 1979 and is a mapbased register of land ownership, designed to provide clear details of the property and map its boundaries on a modern Ordnance Survey plan.

In 2014, the Scottish Government asked Registers of Scotland (the holders of the Sasine and the Land Registers) to complete the Land Register so that all land ownership in Scotland is registered in the Land Register by 2024, with all publicly-owned land registered by 2019. This is also when the Land Registration (Scotland) Act etc. 2012 came into force. This legislation speeds up the completion of the Land Register, leading to the eventual closure of the Sasine Register.

A property ownership, or a “title”, used to make its way from the Sasine Register to the Land Register following a sale. To accelerate the completion of the Land Register, the triggers for moving a title on to the Land Register were increased. In addition, a landowner whose title is still on the Sasine Register can apply to have their title move to the Land Register at any time. This is known as Voluntary Registration.

Voluntary Registration puts the landowner in charge of the land registration process. Most landowners whose titles are still on the Sasine Register will be faced with a transaction which involves compulsory

registration at some point before 2024. Whether Voluntary Registration is suitable for a particular property depends on a number of factors, but for more complex rural and urban properties taking a proactive approach to land registration and making an application for Voluntary Registration can avoid having to deal with registration when under budgetary or time pressures. The landowner controls the time and pace of the registration and they can input their knowledge of the property and its boundaries into the process.

At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Registers of Scotland temporarily closed its doors for new Land Register applications. Since then it has introduced a new digital service for submitting Land Register applications and most of its services have been resumed. Whilst the pandemic and homeworking requirements may have been the key factor for the development of the new digital service, it sits nicely with the overall “digital transformation” policy of Registers of Scotland.

The 2019 target date for the registration of all publicly owned land in Scotland in the Land Register has passed and does not appear to have been met. However, Registers of Scotland is still aiming to complete the Land Register by 2024 and significant resources within the organisation have been diverted to deal with the arrears in registration applications.

The trend of expanding digital services and streamlining and modernising procedures should assist with meeting this ambitious target. Voluntary Registration continues to play an important part in land registration and for some landowners taking steps now to register their ownerships would avoid pressure later on as the 2024 target date for completion of the Land Register approaches.

Rikka Wilkinson is a Senior Solicitor in Turcan Connell’s Land and Property team.