Property, Planning, Land Registry, Housing, Conveyancing, E-Conveyancing
- Land Registry guarantees the title to registered land
in England and Wales and holds records for land ownership and interests.
There is information on the new Land Registration Act 2002, reports on the latest Residential Property Prices,
and various forms and publications.
- Land Registry's e-conveyancing website.
It says "You can explore the wider issues and find out how Land Registry's proposals will benefit every property
owner in England and Wales over the next five to ten years.
Our e-conveyancing Task Force is currently developing an electronic system to help with the buying,
selling and registration of land and property in England and Wales.
This system will provide open access to chain information and will also allow chain transactions
and payments to occur simultaneously, with automatic registration on completion.
It will help reduce the delay and anxiety so often experienced in the house buying process."
- The Lands Tribunal Website is designed to assist
claimants and their representatives. It includes information on the functions and powers of the Lands Tribunal,
an explanation of our rules and procedures and a searchable database of decisions.
The Lands Tribunal was established by the Lands Tribunal Act 1949 to determine questions of disputed
compensation arising out of the compulsory acquisition of land; to decide rating appeals; to exercise
jurisdiction under section 84 of the Law of Property Act 1925 (discharge and modification of restrictive
covenants); and to act as arbitrator under references by consent. Under the 1949 Act other jurisdictions
may be added, and a number have been since the Tribunal came into existence on 1 January 1950.
The Tribunal’s jurisdiction is exercised in England and Wales.
- Garden Court Chambers have created a bank of specialist
legal resources relevant to their practice areas including Housing Legal Resources (take "Resources" and then "Legal Resources").
Within each of these legal areas, they have then set up around a dozen
sub topics where they have located cases, relevant legislation and
useful links. The areas they cover under Housing are Allocation of Housing, Anti-Social Behaviour,
Community Care Housing, Disrepair, Homelessness, Housing Benefit, Housing and Human Rights,
Landlord and Tenant, Possession and Unlawful Eviction & Harassment of Occupiers.
- Practical Conveyancing is a site presented by Legalease
for property lawyers. It contains thousands of articles, case notes, practice points, and weblinks to other
important material. The articles come from major law firms (such as Allen & Overy and Lovells) as well as
journals like The Property Law Journal, The In-House Lawyer, and The Practical Lawyer.
Much of the material is free although some is subscribers-only.
The site can also be used as a modestly-priced source of CPD points.
- Richards Gray provides
a wide and comprehensive range of property & corporate
information services encompassing, amongst many others, Personal Local
Authority, Environmental, Mining, Water, NLIS and Company Searches.
- Jordans offer property services to
commercial property and residential
property lawyers, licensed conveyancers, environmental practitioners and
managing agents. The services include Personal Local Authority searches,
Environments reports on commercial and residential property and Law Agency
services. Jordans are now also one of the three licensed NLIS Channels.
- National Land Information Service describes the basic system
and provides links to the licensed private sector organisations ("channels"):
- Conveyancers can also contract out the search process to
one-stop specialist search agencies with an on-line presence such as
- Two software developers have been accredited by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to submit
Land Transaction Returns via the Internet.
The process uses the Government's "gateway" process (requiring registration) and also uses encryption
to send the forms. This is all part of the Government's push towards e-conveyancing.
Easyconvey is a company which already provides software for many aspects of e-conveyancing, including
case management and the ability for a client to track matters on line. David Horsfall, Director of
Layard Horsfall, of Godalming was the first person in the country to successfully submit an SDLT return
via the Government Gateway; he used the Easy Convey system. There is a charge of £5 per submission.
SDLT.co.uk is a standalone application; the software can be downloaded for free but there is a charge of
£5 per transaction.
- Practice Points from EGi, is a free site
providing commentary on topical issues and recent property law developments.
The news items and articles (about 200 so far) are mainly written by Alan Cooklin, a former reader in property
law at the College of Law and also Law Reporter for Estates Gazette. The database of practice points
can be searched by period and keyword. Some of the articles link through to subscription only resources
on EGi (i.e. you cannot get them for free) but there is a lot to see before you are asked for real money!
- Home Information Pack Action Group (HIPAG) is a group of High Street
Solicitors intending to obtain a high degree of control over the domestic conveyancing market and thereby help
secure their futures. HIPAG already has over 80 member firms, stretching from Cornwall to Cumbria.
They intend to have a total of over 500 members (solicitors and estate agents combined) by the end of 2005.
As it says on the site "The Housing Act 2004 is soon going to determine how the buying and selling of property
is carried out. Home Information Packs (HIPs) will have to be in place before a property can be marketed.
Those estate agents and solicitors who can supply the quickest, most comprehensive and competitively priced
HIPs will be the ones who will win the lion's share of the work available." HIPAG intents to become a
"SHIP", a Specialist Home Information Pack supplier and believes it will be able to compete with any other
pack supplier in the market place including Rightmove and OneSearch Direct. Membership fees for solicitors to
join HIPAG start at £40 a month for four partner firms or less and £50 per month for a five partner firms or more.
The group has been set up by Rob Hailstone, who has been a residential conveyancer for 25 years.
- The Property Standardisation Group ("PSG")
is made up of representatives from a number of prominent Scottish firms, including
McGrigor Donald, Dundas & Wilson, Maclay Murray & Spens and Shepherd+ Wedderburn.
The Group also has various consultees in firms like DLA, Semple Fraser and Brodies.
The aim of the group is to standardise documents and procedures which Scottish lawyers use on a day to
day basis which basically do the same thing but which are often produced in different forms since the
detailed styles have been developed separately in each firm.
The Group has so far produced a suite of Letters of Obligation, a due diligence questionnaire and a completion
checklist and all of these can be downloaded from the site.
They are currently in the process of agreeing the form of a suite of management documentation eg guarantees,
letters of consent, assignations.
- Housing Law Updates has been set up by
Veritas chambers to provide a user friendly guide to UK Housing law and in particular, housing and
landlord & tenant law. It is primarily aimed at landlords but the information is readily transferrable
for the provision of advice to tenants. It includes a section dedicated to providing information on recent
caselaw and legislative changes in these areas of law.
- Landlord-Law, the innovative site set up by sole practitioner
Tessa Shepperson, has a Law Reform section where you can find government consultation and other papers
on Housing Law Reform. Tessa also provides online answer-forms to enable the general public to respond
to these consultations easily. Summaries of past consultation exercises via her site can also be found in this section.
- Hardwicke Building Property Group
provide a monthly newsletter with news, developments, articles and cases.
The information is placed on the Hardwicke Chambers web site and the people registered
to receive the newsletter are informed when it is available.
- Falcon Chambers work principally
in the litigation of the many aspects of
real property and property-related law, and also in advisory and drafting work in the same fields.
A number of free articles are available on the site on property topics.
- The Land Registry is now
providing a web-based service which will replace the former dial-up service.
2 is charged for each register displayed and 3 for a title plan.
Requests for office copies are charged at the same rate as for postal and telephone applications.
- EGi's Legal Service (Property Law)
is an on-line research and news resource. It is one of EGi's range of services to
professionals working in the property market (not free though).
- PLC Property Law
is a new service for commercial property lawyers from Practical
Law Company. Subscribers receive practical updates explaining the implications of new
developments as they occur. The service also provides access to a maintained know-how
bank comprising practice notes, precedents and forms. The updates are integrated with the
know-how bank and useful external resources. There is a free two week trial available
of the service. You can sign up on the site.
- The Property Forum covers
topics of legal property news
and resources. The site is presented by the Property Search Agency (PSA), the
major company which carries out 1 in 3 personal local authority searches nationwide.
- Property Litigation Association exists
to promote specialist property litigation skills within the property industry, to provide a
network for the exchange of information among members, to promote and encourage education and
training in property litigation and to develop a public voice of
property litigation with a media profile and a lobbying capacity. The association provides
conferences and workshops and works closely with a number of organisations to improve the law.
- The Property Law Website is run by barrister
Gary Webber, of 33 Bedford Row. This is an online property law updating service. Updates are available on the site
most months, together with appropriate links to cases, statutes, statutory instruments and other
documents (when available free on the internet). It is also possible to
download the monthly updates in pdf or word format. Material from the monthly updates is also put into
"The Property Law Library" section of the site, which also contains articles and other information
relevant to property law. There is a section covering courses available which relate to property law,
an extensive description of the web resources on the topic and a list of mediators available to deal
with property law disputes. Some parts of the site are free but full access is only available to members
who subscribe, currently £50 plus VAT, with group rates offered.
- planning-applications.co.uk is
a free comprehensive guide to all aspects of the UK Town Planning System, prepared by
Ian P.Butter BSc FRICS a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors
with over 20 years professional experience in the field of planning.
There are guides to submitting planning applications, planning appeals, planning enforcement,
permitted development, a database of local authority sites, links to useful sources of
information and specific professional advice, as well as national Development
Plan monitoring. The site also runs an email based enquiry service, with simple
queries answered for free.
- Philippsohn Crawfords Berwald - London,
provide a series of comments and briefings on forthcoming and existing legislation
relating to property (particularly commercial property) as well as developments in the courts.
- Macfarlanes provides a bulletin
of selected issues and developments in property law called "property Press".
- Shelter, covering problems of bad housing.
- Leasehold Advisory Service
is an independent advice agency, funded partly by Government grant and partly by the private
sector, providing free advice to leaseholders, landlords,
professional advisers and others on the law affecting residential leasehold property.
- Council for Licensed Conveyancers has
a site describing the rules for licensed conveyancers and the body whose job it
is to regulate them.
Public Law
BNH Associates offer specialist legal support and outsourcing
services for solicitors and insurance companies:
cfa explanation and sign up,
statement taking,
document process serving,
RTA investigations,
locus reports,
people tracing,
accident reconstruction and
motor theft claim investigations.