Owning your own home

Well, I'm not going to argue the point as you seem to have your mind made up, but for the benefit of everyone else, here's a few reasons why it's worth hanging onto old title deeds and not relying on Land Registry records.

1. Land Registry document retention is patchy at best, particularly historically. In theory they should have a copy of every conveyance, transfer or deed noted against the title, or a reference to the title which the document in question is filed under. In practice, they don't. It's very common to ask the Land Registry for a copy of a document referred to on a registered title and find they don't have a copy.

2. The problem is particularly significant in older registered titles where the Land Registry used to produce a Land Certificate proving title with the historical title deeds bound up in it. It's pretty rare that the Land Registry still has copies of those documents.

3. Even if they do have a copy, there's no guarantee it will be legible. This is particularly true of the period when they were using mechanised microfiche copying systems. There are a lot of documents held by the Land Registry which are now held digitally but are copies of older microfiche documents where either individual pages or the whole document is illegible. The problem is particularly significant where the documents are hand-written.

4. Being registered as the proprietor of a property at the Land Registry proves you have title to that area of land. However, almost all boundaries shown on Land Registry plans are general boundaries as a result of rule 60 of the Land Registration Rules 2003. As a result, you can't rely on Land Registry titles and plans to show where the boundaries of your property are. In order to establish where the legal boundary is, you have to go back to the original conveyance or transfer which created that boundary. Which is a problem if you've lost it.

5. Being registered as the proprietor of a property at the Land Registry proves you have title to that area of land. However, it's sometimes useful to know how owned the land previously, and that is information which is not always available from the Land Registry. Restrictive covenants and easements can be extinguished if the two areas of land have at some point been in common ownership - the technical term is unity of seisin. If you have the historical title deeds you can trace back ownership to see if this has occurred. If you don't, and you have to rely on Land Registry records, you may well not be able to. Prior to 1993 historical title information from the Land Registry is pretty much non-existent.

6. The burden of restrictive covenants is registered againt registered titles. The benefit is not (except sometimes in building schemes). So you know that an area of land is subject to restrictive covenants, but the registered title won't tell you who has the benefit. In the note of the restrictive covenant against the registered title there will sometimes be a note of what the restrictive covenants are - not always, sometimes it'll just say 'A conveyance of [date] contains restrictive covenants' and nothing more. If there's a record of what the restrictive covenant is, then it might state that the covenant is for the benefit of the 'Vendor's Retained Land'. That term - the Retained Land - may well be defined elsewhere in the conveyance or transfer. But the Land Registry won't include that bit in the recital in the Charges Register. And for the reasons set out above they may well not have a copy of the relevant conveyance/transfer. So if you haven't kept it, too bad.

7. Historical conveyances will often have a covenant for the production of conveyances where part of an area of land is being transferred. This means the purchaser can see documents which relate to their land. Those documents won't necessarily be produced on first registration, because the landowner will have the right to see the documents but won't have the documents themselves. If you've got the conveyance including the covenant for production, it can be very helpful in tracking down who holds the relevant documents. If you don't, you're stuffed. The documents you need may still be out there, but you have no way of tracking them down.

8. The Property Register of a registered title will often includes notes of easements, such as rights of way or drainage rights. It'll say something like 'The property registered under this title has the benefit of a right of way over the land shown edged blue in a conveyance of [date]'. If you're lucky, that colouring will be replicated on the LR plan. Quite often it's not. So if LR hasn't kept a copy of that conveyance - and as noted above, you'd be a fool to rely upon them having a copy - then good luck proving where that right of way goes. Or that you have a right to use the water pipes going under your neighbour's garden.

As with most things, there's a good chance you won't ever need historical title deeds. However, if a dispute starts about boundaries, restrictive covenant, easements and other interests in land then they can be invaluable. For that reason I'd always recommend keeping them secure, either at a bank, a firm of solicitors or a dedicated secure document storage company. It's probably not a bad idea to keep digital copies as well, but having the original wet ink signature hard copy is always best.