Land registry search in Wales: title register, title plan and filed deeds for any Welsh address

A land registry search in Wales starts with the postal address or the title number, because a search against the name of a living private individual is not open to the public.

The order form asks for four things: the postcode or address, the tenure if you know it (freehold, leasehold or not sure), the title number if you have one from an old completion statement or mortgage offer, and an email address for delivery. If the postcode lookup does not find the property, type the address by hand.

Then choose the document. We confirm the title against the address, then email the PDF within 24 UK business hours; how to choose between the three documents, and how ordering works end to end, is explained on our land registry search home page.

There is no separate land registry for Wales: one register covers England and Wales, and the same official copy of the register, title plan and filed deeds is issued for a Welsh title as for an English one. What differs is the office that deals with the title, the register format and the title number prefix.

Welsh titles are dealt with by the registry’s Wales Office in Swansea. The header of a Welsh official copy carries the title number, the edition date, the sentence “This official copy shows the entries on the register of title on [date] at [time]”, and a line stating that the title is dealt with by the Wales Office.

Scotland and Northern Ireland each have their own register and their own documents, and nothing on this page applies to them. England-only features, such as county prefixes and the order in which areas became compulsory, are on our land registry England page.

A Welsh title register is bilingual in its headings and standard wording, and monolingual in each individual entry. The bilingual format took effect on 1 October 2001 and applies to every register for a title in Wales.

The register’s published guidance puts it simply: each entry appears in the language of the source document it is based on. Bilingual entries are not permitted, so a covenant taken from a 1978 conveyance drafted in English is entered in English, and a transfer drafted in Welsh produces a Welsh entry.

One further Welsh-only feature sits in the B register: the proprietor’s address for service can be recorded in Welsh, at the applicant’s choice or on request, so a Welsh-language address there is normal and not an error. How the three parts of the register fit together, entry by entry, is covered on our title register page.

Every Welsh title number begins WA or CYM, followed by up to six digits. A title number is the unique reference for each individual register, and Wales was one of the areas where the original prefix ran out: the numbering stops at 999,999, so once the WA series was exhausted the CYM prefix was created.

Both prefixes are current. A house first registered in 1978 can still be WA753540, while a plot transferred out of a larger title in 2020 was given CYM803898. Registers cross-refer using these numbers, so a Welsh freehold register may contain an entry such as “Transfer of the land edged and numbered CYM803898 in green on the title plan dated 7 July 2020”, meaning part of the land was sold off and now has its own title.

If you already hold a WA or CYM number, enter it on the order form: it removes any doubt about which of several similar addresses is meant.

We match a Welsh property on its postal address, then confirm the title before ordering, because the property description in the register keeps the language of the deed it was taken from. Caerdydd and Cardiff, Abertawe and Swansea, Y Fenni and Abergavenny are the same places, but the lookup returns one form and the register may carry the other.

The property register describes the land by reference to the title plan and a short address, for example “land on the north east side of” a named road in a named town. That description usually dates from first registration, so an older spelling may persist. The register’s published guidance also notes that a property which does not appear in a search may be filed under the wrong address.

What helps us most is the postcode and the house number or name, in either language, plus any former name of the property. If the lookup finds nothing (common for flats, farm buildings, new plots and land without a postal address), type what you have into the form and we confirm the title with you before anything is ordered.

Wales has 22 principal councils, in place since 1 April 1996, and each one deals with planning and the local search enquiries raised in a purchase for its area. None of them keeps the register of title, so a council cannot issue a title register or title plan. A council can, though, appear in the register as an owner, in the form “PROPRIETOR: NEATH PORT TALBOT COUNTY BOROUGH COUNCIL of Port Talbot Civic Centre, Port Talbot SA13 1PJ”.

The preserved county is a ceremonial area, not the prefix on the title number: a house in Monmouthshire and a house in Anglesey both carry WA or CYM.

The right document depends on what the register is likely to hold for that kind of property, so the four examples below show typical entries and the order that answers each question. They are illustrations, not statistics.

The Pembrokeshire cottage turns on the track. A benefiting right of way sits in the A register of the cottage, the burden sits in the C register of the land it crosses, and the title plan shows which strip is meant, so the two are read together. The cottage’s own boundaries are general boundaries, which our title plan page explains.

The Cardiff Bay flat has two titles: its own leasehold title and the block’s freehold, where the flat lease is listed in a schedule of leases with its registration date, term and the lessee’s CYM title number. The flat register identifies the lease but does not reproduce it, and no longer refers to the rent, so the lease itself comes from the conveyancing pack. The Powys smallholding is the one where a search can come back short: the register only knows registered land, and an unregistered field is proved by paper deeds.

An entry that “The mines and minerals are excepted” means the registered title does not include the minerals beneath the surface. It sits in the A register because it defines what the title covers, and it usually traces back to the deed by which the land was first sold off by an estate or a coal owner who kept the minerals. The entry is short; the conveyance behind it is what a buyer’s solicitor reads.

Read the entry with the C register. Where a conveyance is noted as containing restrictive covenants, the same deed may also hold the mineral reservation and any rights of entry that go with it, and if the register says “Copy filed” the conveyancing pack will contain it. Coal-mining interests are among the interests that cannot be protected by a notice on the register, so their absence from the C register does not mean they do not exist.

For a registered Welsh house, the title deeds today are the official copies of the register and title plan, together with any deeds the registry holds on file and refers to in the register. The paper deeds lodged on first registration were returned to the applicant; the registry keeps scanned copies of the documents the register refers to, marked “Copy filed”.

So a request for the house deeds in Wales usually means two orders: the title register, which proves ownership and lists the covenants, easements and charges, and the conveyancing pack, which supplies the conveyance, transfer, lease or deed of covenant behind those entries. Our title deeds page covers where pre-registration deeds are likely to be.