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22 April 2016 / Sarah Dawe , Nick Hopkins
Issue: 7695 / Categories: Features , Property
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Whose land is it anyway?

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Nick Hopkins & Sarah Dawe consider the challenge of registered title fraud

On 31 March, the Law Commission published its consultation paper, Updating the Land Registration Act 2002 . With around 86% of land in England and Wales now registered, amounting to over 24 million registered titles, any inefficiencies or uncertainties in the land registration system can have a significant impact on the property market. Land registration also has wider importance for business and the economy. The World Bank Group recently suggested in Doing Business 2016: Measuring Regulatory Quality and Efficiency that a “well-designed land administration system…makes it possible for the property market to exist and to operate”.

The consultation paper provides a wide-ranging review of the Land Registration Act 2002 (LRA 2002), but it is not directed at a comprehensive reformulation. The aim is to update LRA 2002 within its existing legal framework, in light of the experience of its operation. The topics covered in the review are mainly technical, but are practically significant. Some of the topics touch on broader ideas

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