Title deeds in England and Wales: what they are today and how to get a copy

Title deeds today, for a registered property, are the entries on the official land register for England and Wales and the plan attached to them. Since first registration, ownership has been recorded in an individual register with its own title number, such as LA123456, and each later sale, mortgage or lease has been recorded as an entry rather than as a new sheet of paper. Any person may inspect the register, whether or not they own the property.

We search by address or title number, check each document against the address you gave us, and deliver PDFs within 24 UK business hours.

The word “deeds” survives because people still picture a bundle tied with tape. That bundle still proves title only for unregistered land. When a solicitor asks for “the deeds” of a registered property, they mean the official copies of the register and title plan, plus any lease, transfer, conveyance or deed of covenant the register refers to.

You get your house deeds by ordering official copies of the register and plan, and a conveyancing pack if you need the filed deeds. The route depends on whether the property is registered, and almost every house sold since 1990 is.

1. Registered, and you want ownership, rights and mortgages. Order the title register. It names the registered owners, states the tenure, lists mortgages and restrictive covenants, and refers to filed deeds by date.
2. Registered, and you want the extent of the land. Order the title plan with the register. It shows the registered extent edged red on an Ordnance Survey base, with general boundaries rather than exact ones.
3. Registered, and you want the wording of the old conveyance, the lease or a deed of covenant. Order the conveyancing pack: official copies of the documents the register refers to that are on file.
4. Unregistered. There is no register to copy. The original deeds are with the owner, a lender if there is a mortgage, or the solicitor who acted on the last purchase.
5. Unregistered and the deeds are lost. The register’s published guidance says a possessory class of title may be granted on first registration where the deeds cannot be produced. That is work for a conveyancer, not a document we supply.

For most readers, routes 1 and 2 together answer the question. The order page shows the full amount before you confirm; the home page explains how ordering works.

When someone asks for the deeds, they usually want one specific fact. This table maps the question to the record that answers it for a registered property.

Two things people expect are not on the register at all. The amount owed on a mortgage is not normally shown, only the lender’s name and the date of the charge, and exact boundary lines are not recorded; the plan shows general boundaries.

The old paper deeds went back to whoever applied for first registration. The registry examines them, decides the class of title, opens a register and returns the bundle on completion. From that day the register is the title and the bundle is history.

The register’s published guidance lists three places the bundle may now be: with a solicitor, with a mortgage lender, or with the owner. Once a title was registered the old deeds stopped proving ownership, so not every family kept them.

What the registry does keep is a scanned copy of many documents that register entries refer to; where one is held, the entry carries a note such as “Copy filed”. Those are the documents in a conveyancing pack. A deed that no entry refers to is not on file, and the only copy is the paper one.

Scenario: inheriting a house with no paperwork

Your late aunt’s bungalow in Morecambe has no deeds in the house, no solicitor you know of, and no mortgage. Start by checking whether the address is registered. If it is, the official copy of the register names her as proprietor and gives the date she was registered as the bracketed date at the start of the entry, for example “(14.06.1996)”; that copy, with the plan, is what the probate solicitor needs.

If the bungalow is unregistered, the search returns no title and the deeds are somewhere physical: the solicitor who acted when she bought, or a bank that once held a mortgage. A sale by the executors will trigger first registration.

Scenario: the mortgage is paid off and the lender “sent the deeds back”

You cleared the mortgage on a terraced house in Maidstone in 2014 and the lender posted you an envelope holding a cover letter and an old charge certificate. That certificate has no legal significance for a registered title. What mattered happened electronically: the lender sent a discharge, and the registry cancelled the charge entry and the lender’s restriction automatically.

To see the result, order a fresh official copy of the title register. The C: Charges Register simply no longer shows the “Registered charge dated …” entry or the “Proprietor: [lender]” line beneath it; the register does not print the word “discharged”. If the entry is still there, contact the lender.

If the lender sent nothing at all, that is common for a property registered before the loan was taken out; there were no paper deeds to return. Your deeds are the register and plan.

Unregistered land is land for which no individual register exists and title is still proved by the chain of paper deeds. It is now a minority: the registry’s annual report published in July 2026 said the register held more than 27 million titles covering more than 90% of the land area of England and Wales. In May 2019 the registry put the unregistered share at 14% of freehold land; coverage had been around 50% in 2005.

The land that remains unregistered has usually not been sold, given away or mortgaged since its area became compulsory. A house last bought in 1968, in an area made compulsory in 1975, may still be unregistered in 2026 if nothing since then has triggered registration.

First registration happens when a trigger occurs: a sale, a gift, a transfer on death, the grant of a lease for more than seven years, or a first mortgage of the land. The application must be made within two months of completion. The registrar examines the deeds, asks whether the title is one that a willing buyer could properly be advised by a competent professional adviser to accept, grants a class of title and returns the deeds.

We cannot supply documents for unregistered land, because there is nothing on the register to copy. What we can do is tell you that an address returns no registered title, so you look for the paper deeds instead.

Compulsory registration spread area by area over most of the twentieth century. The registry was founded in 1862, but registration stayed voluntary for decades; the power to declare compulsory areas arrived in 1925.

Eastbourne became the first compulsory area in 1926. Districts were then added one by one: a sale inside a designated area triggered first registration, while land outside stayed on paper deeds. It took until 1990 for the last areas of England and Wales to be brought in.

A further change on 13 October 2003 substantially expanded the events that trigger registration. The bracketed date on the first entry of the A: Property Register, for example “(20.10.1978)”, tells you when a particular title was first registered. The England page covers the regional sequence; the Wales page covers the bilingual register.

There is no deeds registry in England and Wales because the only ones that ever existed were regional, and all have closed. A deeds registry did not hold title; it held “memorials”, short summaries of deeds, so a buyer could check for earlier dealings.

The Middlesex Deeds Registry was established in 1708 and recorded deeds affecting freehold land and leases of more than 21 years. Its last deed was registered on 31 December 1938. The records are at The London Archives and, as at September 2026, none are online.

Yorkshire had three registries, one for each Riding, and they closed in stages. The North Riding register (1736 to 1970) is held by North Yorkshire Archives, the West Riding register (1704 to 1970) by the West Yorkshire Archive Service in Wakefield, and the East Riding register (1708 to 1976) by East Riding Archives in Beverley. For those years, the archive, not the land register, is the place to write to.

A historical copy is an official copy of a previous edition of the register or title plan, showing the entries as they stood on an earlier date. The header of every official copy carries an “Edition date” line, for example “Edition date: 08.07.2020”, and earlier editions can be requested.

The register’s published guidance says register history may be available for dates after 4 May 1993, and title plan history for dates after 13 October 2003. Paper copies of earlier editions may exist in the archive and take time to retrieve, and historical copies may not provide a complete record of all transactions.

A historical edition can show a previous proprietor or a mortgage since discharged. Historical editions are not one of the three documents we supply as standard; email info@uklandregistryonline.org.uk with the title number and the years you need, and we will tell you whether we can help.

The official copy of the title register proves ownership of a registered property. The register’s published guidance is direct: copies of deeds cannot be used to prove ownership, for example in a court case. An official copy of the register, plan or filed document is admissible in evidence to the same extent as the original.

Every official copy is timed and dated; if an application was pending at that moment, the copy is backdated to before the earliest pending application. Electronic official copies are issued as PDF files with a lead page, and the register’s published guidance treats a print of the PDF as an official copy provided the file has not been modified since receipt.