A land registry plan is a map of a specific property that provides necessary information about that property in the UK. This plan is approved and maintained by the HM Land Registry department. This plan provides information about the property’s ownership, boundaries, interior, level, and orientation.
A land registry plan is often required for:
- Ownership transfer (when buying or selling a property)
- Registration of your property
- Planning permissions
- Settling boundary disputes
If you are planning to indulge in any of the aforementioned scenarios, you must prepare a land registry plan for your property to protect your interests. Preparation of a land registry plan is mandatory for all legal transactions related to your property. However, preparing it can be challenging, but not when you know all the requirements. Today, we will guide you on all the requirements for a land registry plan.
Requirements for Land Registry Plans
HM Land Registry has set some requirements for the plan that must be fulfilled when preparing one. These requirements are:
Accurate Scaling
Scaling is the ratio between the actual and drawn distances on the map. It must be done accurately to stated scales, ensuring your plane is compliant with HMLR. The preferred scales for different properties are:
- 1:1250 – 1:500 for a property in urban areas or cities
- 1:2500 for a property in a rural area
Orientation
Orientation is the directionality of the plan to ensure that it is easy to understand the map and locate your property. Usually, land registry plans have a north point to show orientation.
Sufficient Details About Surroundings
Your land registry plan must show details about different streets, roads or buildings surrounding your property. These details must be sufficient to locate your property on the Ordnance Survey map quickly. This is a detailed map that forms the basis of all registry plans in the UK.
Appropriate Representation of the Property Boundary
When preparing your plan, your property’s boundaries must be represented using appropriate colours or symbols, ensuring no part is obscured. The boundaries or areas you will retain will be drawn in green, and the area that is the subject of the transaction will be represented in red colour. You can also use edging or symbols to represent the boundaries.
Defining the Level of Property
In the case of maisonettes or flats, your plan must represent the level of your property. It would be best to clearly define on which floor your property is. If you own all the floors of a building, then you may need a separate plan for each floor or have to briefly represent all floors on a single page.
Representation of Internal Property Extents
Internal property extent must also be represented on the map, especially when leasing a multi-tenanted building. In this case, the landlord has to manage the exterior or structure of the building, while the interior is the tenants’ responsibility. Interior boundaries are represented by the red colour. However, different colours will be used for shared parts of the property such as stairs, garage, etc.
Avoid Phrases and Marks That Question the Reliability of Plan
Apart from adding and showing different things, it would be best if you avoided some marks or phrases raising questions about the reliability of your land registry plan. These marks and wordings are:
- For identification only
- Do not scale from this drawing
- Draft
- Any other similar statement.
Similarly, you must avoid adding anything that can block the representation of necessary details.
Essential Tips to Prepare a Land Registry Plan
The following are some practical tips for preparing a land registry plan.
- Consult with your lawyer to better understand the legal details that must be shown on the plan.
- Drawing this map while showing all the details can be difficult for you; therefore, consider hiring authorised and licensed surveyors and architects to prepare your plan.
- Avoid using those colours that may not be differentiable after printing as it may lead to the rise of issues by the Land Registry.
- Print the plan to check all colours can easily be differentiated.
- Don’t use the page scaling option when printing the map, as it will distort the scaling of your plan by increasing or decreasing the size according to the paper.
- The paper size on which the plan should be printed must be mentioned.
- A bar scale should be added to the plan to check if the plan is printed the right way or not.
- Self-examine the plan before submitting it to check if you can understand all the mentioned details.
Note: The aforementioned post is for educational purposes only and must not be considered as legal advice.