Correcting Land Registry mistakes

The overall idea behind land registration is that the State provides a guarantee of title - if you are the registered owner then by the very fact of registration you are the legal owner. This means that if there is an error in the Land Register it cannot simply be corrected without more ado - if it could then the State guarantee would not be much of a guarantee.

Instead there is a procedure - in Schedule 4 of the Land Registration Act 2002 - for the correction of mistakes: correction is not automatic.

Mistakes in the Land Register can arise in a number of ways. It could simply be that a member of staff at the Land Registry, on a busy day, has made a clerical error. But mistakes can also arise where Land Registry staff are acting quite correctly and efficiently but based on incomplete information. For example a conveyance document may be sent to the Land Registry with an application for First Registration but, unbeknown to the staff at the Land Registry a small portion of the land shown as being conveyed to the applicant (A) may in fact have already been conveyed to someone else (B). This may only come to light when, later on, B, or a successor in title to B, comes to apply for First Registration and finds that part of the land they wish to register is already registered to A. 

In fact what often happens is that the mistake is not picked up when B applies for First Registration but only later on when some issue arises on the ground concerning the "overlapping land".

The limits of the power to correct the Register

Typically there will be two innocent parties - the applicant who wants the register corrected and the other party who bought land in good faith, relying on the State guarantee of title, who would suffer loss if the register is corrected. 

But sometimes the dilemma is not as stark as it might at first appear. If, in the above example, the piece of overlapping land  is in the possession of A (e.g. it is part of A's garden fenced off, like the rest of A's garden, from the land B is in possession of) then A may have obtained good title to the overlapping land by reason of adverse possession so that even if the overlapping land should not initially have been included in A's title, B is not prejudiced by the mistake because B could not have successfully applied for First Registration of the piece of land anyway - because B no longer has title (by reason of A's adverse possession).    

But assuming - as is normally the case - that one party would be prejudiced whichever way the decision goes, the procedure is as follow:

• If the person who would be prejudiced by correction of the mistake is not (at the date the application is made) in possession of the land, then the mistake will be corrected unless there are "exceptional circumstances which justify not making the alteration".

• If the person who would be prejudicially affected by correcting the mistake is in possession of the land then the correction will not be made unless "he has by fraud or lack of proper care caused or substantially contributed to the mistake" or "it would for any other reason be unjust for the alteration not to be made".  

Disclaimer

The above explanation of the law is only an overview and in order to be reasonably concise I have had to leave some details out - details which are likely to affect what the law would say about your own situation. So please do not rely on the above but Contact me for advice   

This page was lasted updated in August 2026.       Disclaimer