When you ask me to give you legal advice, or to draft a pre-action letter or a statement of case in a case in a court or other tribunal, or an application to the Land Registry, you will need to email me with copies of relevant documents which you have. In addition to documents you already have you might also want to obtain other documents from public sources or perhaps from other people. When handling documents make sure that you keep track of where documents have come from because in some cases what documents you had sight of, at various times in the past, and what documents you have only recently seen, can be important.
Consider first what needs to be obtained straight away - for example you might need to take copies of webpages before they change or take photographs of land, buildings or objects before changes happen.
Then you might want to look further afield. Where you look depends on what your case is about.
If your case concerns land you can obtain historical satellite, aerial or ground-level photographs which were taken in the past by a variety of organisations. Many aerial photos are available free using Google Earth Pro. A well known source of street level photographs is Google Street View. In addition to public sources of images, the current or previous occupants of land, or neighbours and relatives who may have stayed, may have historical photographs. Another potential source of historical photos is records of planning applications because the documents supporting past applications for planning permission are available to download and often include photographs taken by professional surveyors showing what a property was like at the time. Sometimes there might also be photos of other properties in the surrounding area accompanying a planning application.
You can obtain historical maps, and/or obtain current maps such as an Ordnance Survey map.
You might want to obtain a copy of the relevant part of the map of Adopted Highways (obtainable from the relevant Highway Authority such as a county council under the Highways Act 1980) which will show the boundary of a highway maintained at public expense. Title to the surface layer of land which is adopted highway vests in the Highway Authority so the highway boundary is where ownership of the surface changes from the Highway Authority to the adjoining landowner.
The map of Adopted Highways only shows highways which are maintained at public expense. Other public highways and public paths are shown in the Definitive Map of Public Paths held by councils under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. You can ask the council to send you an extract of a particular part of the map.
Even if your case concerns something other than planning permission, records of planning applications if used carefully can also be a source of information about the layout of land. Planning applications are requests for permission under the Town and Country Planning Acts to change the use of land and/or build on it. Unless it is a retrospective application to regularise what already exists, a planning application will be seeking permission to do something in the future and, if permission is granted, the landowner may of course decide not to make the change after all. Nevertheless plans and forms in planning applications may reveal information about the then current use and layout. The accompanying plans typically include an "existing site plan" as well as a plan of what is proposed. Thus planning application records, if used carefully, can sometimes help to supplement information obtained from large-scale maps.
You may wonder whether it would be useful to look for legal cases involving your opponent thinking that they might show some fact or pattern of behaviour by your opponent which might be relevant to the current dispute. It is in fact quite rare for past cases involving disputes between your opponent and some other person (about some other unconnected land) to be relevant but if you have the time and wish to do so, you could make enquiries.
If relevant you can obtain Wills from the Probate Registry.
You might want to obtain records of local land charges.
Some documents relevant to companies registered under the Companies Acts and limited liability partnerships can be obtained from Companies House. This includes companies which have been dissolved within the last 20 years. Most documents held by Companies House are available to download but some pre-1990 records may be held only in paper form and a visit to their offices may then be required. Records of companies dissolved more than 20 years ago might be held by the National Archives. Documents for mutuals can be obtained from the FCA.
The Land Registry hold documents for each registered property. The Land Register contains, for each property title number, a Register of Title document and a Title Plan document. The general idea of land registration is that when someone buys land they are bound by the burdens on the land (such as a right of way over it or a restrictive covenant limiting how it can be used) but only if those burdens are noted on the Register of Title. There are some exceptions to this but that is the general principle. A note on the Register might be self-contained text or it might be text which refers to a document filed under the title number. You can fill in form OC2 to obtain a copy of any document referred to in the Register of Title document which says COPY FILED. You can also ask for other documents filed under a title number which may not be referred to in the Register of Title document but in that case you have to know the date and type of document filed before you can request a copy using form OC2. You may already have this information or you might first need to ask the Land Registry to give you a list of the documents which are filed under the the particular title numbers you are interested in. As many documents are still held in paper form, it can take some work for the Land Registry to provide a list of not-referred-to documents held under a particular title number and they may ask you to specify the type of documents and/or date range of documents in the title number which you are interested in.
The reason why barristers do not investigate or collect evidence is that, if matters get to the stage of litigation, the way in which evidence was collected might be challenged and need to be proved and a barrister cannot act as a witness - at least not in the same case as they act as advocate. For example in case the date that a video was taken should be disputed it is usual for the person who took the video to say, in their witness statement, when they took it. What a website - e.g. the website of your opponent - contained on a particular day might be disputed so if a PDF copy of a webpage needs to be taken, you need to take the copy so that you can, if necessary at the final hearing (trial), formally confirm the URL and the date on which you took the copy. So you yourself will need to carry out any investigations, searches, photography etc. which may be needed, and provide me with copies.
If, when I am drafting an Opinion or carrying out other drafting work, it becomes apparent that you have not provided me with a key document but it just happens to be a document I can easily obtain an official copy of from the website of a statutory public register, such as the Land Registry or Companies House, I may, to save time, obtain an official copy myself direct. It is proper for me to do this because in these circumstances there is little risk that the way the document was obtained might later become the subject of a dispute, because in the unlikely event that an opponent had any doubt about the genuineness and completeness of the document they could simply request their own official copy of the document from the same public register, and compare. Of course the accuracy of the contents of a document - filed accounts for a company, for example - obtained from Companies House may be a matter of dispute but the fact that it is a genuine copy of a document which had been filed at Companies House is unlikely to be a matter of dispute.
Of course even if I have, exceptionally, obtained some documents direct from a public statutory register that does not exclude the possibility of their being other relevant documents in the same statutory register and it is for you to carry out as much investigation/searching as you think appropriate given the amount of time you have and the importance of the matter to you.
This information page is designed to be used only by clients of John Antell who have entered into an agreement for the provision of legal services. The information in it is necessarily of a general nature and will not be applicable to every case: it is intended to be used only in conjunction with more specific advice to the individual client about the individual case. This information page should not be used by, or relied on, by anyone else.
This page was lasted updated in December 2024. Disclaimer