Land Registry holds a large number of documents in electronic format. This has allowed the creation of a service for professional customers to view and download these documents online, and speeded up the services available to the general public.

The paper originals of these scanned documents have continued to be stored for several years but Land Registry is now giving notice of its intention to begin destroying these on 28 February 2009. All of the documents to be destroyed were kept by Land Registry on 13 October 2003 (when both the Land Registration Act 2002 and the Land Registration Rules 2003 came into force) and are documents on which a register entry is or was founded (such as a transfer). To begin with, the destruction will only be of those documents a scanned image of which is held on Land Registry�s database.

Rule 204 of the Land Registration Rules 2003 provided a five-year period for requests to be made for the return of documents kept by Land Registry on 13 October 2003 on which a registry entry is or was founded. This period expired on 12 October 2008. Land Registry will continue to consider requests after this date, but there is, of course, a risk that the request will be too late if not received before 28 February 2009, the document having already been destroyed.

Requests can only be made by certain persons, as described in rule 204. The request should be made by way of letter or Land Registry form RD1, and a fee is payable of £8 per document. Documents that are requested will be identified during the destruction process and returned at that time.

Audience:
All customers

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