Land registry search in England: title register, title plan and filed deeds for any English address

A land registry search for an English address gives you up to three official copies from the official land register for England and Wales: the title register, the title plan and the documents referred to in the register. The register is open to anyone, so you do not need to own the property or have the owner’s permission.

The title register is the ownership record: it names the proprietor, states whether the title is freehold or leasehold, and lists mortgages, restrictions, rights of way and restrictive covenants. The title plan shows the registered extent edged red on an Ordnance Survey base. The conveyancing pack contains official copies of the deeds the register says are filed, such as a lease or an old conveyance.

The home page explains how ordering works and which document answers which question; this page covers what is specific to England: title number prefixes, how registration reached each part of the country, which properties are still unregistered, and what a council holds that the register does not.

An English title number is a prefix of two or three letters followed by a sequential number of up to six digits, so a title number such as LA123456 identifies one Lancashire title and nothing else. The prefixes were mainly based on the county boundaries in force between 1965 and 1974, which is why they often do not match the council that serves the property today, and some were created for the registry’s own administrative convenience. Kent is one such case: KT and KK were not available, so Kent titles carry TT.

The numbering only runs to 999,999 for each prefix. Where a county has used up its six digits a second prefix was created, and the registry gives Greater Manchester (GM and MAN) as an example; the Welsh prefixes WA and CYM came about the same way.

The title number sits at the top of every official copy, beside the edition date, and is repeated on the title plan. It also links titles to each other: when part of a title is sold off, the parent register gains an entry saying the land edged and numbered in green on the title plan has been removed and registered under the title number shown in green. Give us the number from a mortgage offer or an old official copy and we skip the address match.

Registration in England spread one designated area at a time over more than sixty years, which is why two houses on the same street can have first registration dates decades apart. The register was founded in 1862, but registering was voluntary for its first six decades, and the idea that a sale should force a property onto the register was first put forward in 1897.

The power to declare areas of compulsory registration arrived in 1925, and the first compulsory area was Eastbourne in 1926. From then on, whenever an area was designated, the next sale of a property inside it triggered first registration, while properties that stayed in the same hands stayed off the register. Designation reached the whole of England and Wales in 1990.

The bracketed date at the start of entry A1 in any title register, for example “(20.10.1978)”, is the date that title was first registered. The rules were widened on 13 October 2003: since then a transfer of unregistered freehold land by sale, gift, court order or assent, a lease for more than seven years, and a first legal mortgage all force registration, and the application must be lodged within two months of completion or the transfer fails to pass the legal estate.

No. As at July 2026 the register held more than 27 million titles covering more than 90 per cent of the land area of England and Wales, so under a tenth of the land area, across both countries, has no title number.

Unregistered English land is typically land that has not been sold or mortgaged since its area became compulsory: farmland held by one family for generations, houses bought before designation and never remortgaged, and odd parcels such as verges and back lanes. For unregistered land the register holds nothing, and the title is proved by paper deeds held by the owner, a lender or a solicitor; the title deeds page explains where those deeds usually end up.

If an address does not appear when we search, we do not assume the land is unregistered: the property may be registered under a slightly different address, the boundaries may have shifted since first registration, or the plot may sit inside a larger parent title. The register keeps an index map based on the Ordnance Survey map that records every registered title and every pending first registration, and an official search of that map confirms whether land is registered and under which title numbers.

Four invented but typical English properties show how the three documents fit together.

A Victorian terrace in Leeds. A two-bedroom back-to-back last bought before Leeds became a compulsory area, and never mortgaged since, may still be unregistered. If it is, there is no register to buy and the owner’s deeds are the only evidence of title. The next sale triggers first registration, when the registrar examines whether the title is one a willing buyer could properly be advised to accept; where deeds have been lost the registrar may grant possessory rather than absolute title, stated at the top of the B register.

A new-build in Milton Keynes. A detached house on a development completed in 2025 will have been carved out of the developer’s parent title. Its own register is short, but the transfer that created it often contains estate covenants and rights over shared roads and drains, recorded by reference to that transfer. Order the title register for the plot and the conveyancing pack for the transfer.

A leasehold flat in Manchester. A second-floor flat in a converted mill has two titles: the leasehold title for the flat, and the freehold title for the building, on which the flat lease is noted in a schedule of leases. The leasehold register gives the lease date, term and parties, and states whether the landlord’s title is registered. Order the leasehold title register and the conveyancing pack for the lease; the freehold register is a separate order.

A farm in Devon. A farm assembled over a century may be partly registered and partly not, because each parcel was registered only when it was bought or mortgaged after designation. The registered parcels may each have their own title, plotted at 1:2500 or, on moorland, 1:10,000, and their A registers may except the mines and minerals. Settle which fields are registered first; then order the title register and title plan for each parcel, and the conveyancing pack where the register refers to a filed conveyance.

London properties are registered like any other English property, and the only deeds registries England ever had, at Middlesex and the three Yorkshire Ridings, are long closed. The Middlesex Deeds Registry ran from 1708 until the last deed was registered on 31 December 1938, and the Yorkshire registries closed between 1970 and 1976; the title deeds page tells that story. None of those records form part of the land register, so the only current title record for a registered English property is its register and title plan.

English councils hold records about a property that the land register does not. Every local authority in England and Wales other than a county council must keep a local land charges register, which records permissions, prohibitions and restrictions affecting properties in its area: planning permissions, conservation area designations, tree preservation orders, listed building status and enforcement notices. As at September 2026 more than 300 of those local registers had been migrated to a single national service.

Local land charges bind a buyer whether or not they appear on the title register, which is why a conveyancer orders a local authority search alongside the official copies, not instead of them. The council’s planning register and building control records show what has been permitted and signed off; the register of title shows who owns the land and what private rights and covenants attach to it. If you are checking a covenant before an extension, the title register and conveyancing pack carry the covenant, and the council’s planning file carries the permission.

England and Wales share one land register and one set of documents, but registers for Welsh titles have carried bilingual Welsh and English headings since 1 October 2001, while English titles are issued in English only. If the property is in Wales, the Wales page covers the Welsh prefixes, the bilingual format and the 22 principal councils. Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate registers and separate documents, which this page does not cover.