Extract title sheets or Registers Direct?

The Society’s Property Law Committee was asked to consider whether it should be standard practice in a conveyancing transaction, including a commercial conveyancing transaction, to rely on a Registers Direct copy of the title sheet/cadastral map rather than require
an official extract of the title sheet/cadastral map.

The committee agreed that as the current practice in conveyancing transactions is overwhelmingly reliant on Registers Direct copy titles and, following clarification of Registers of Scotland’s terms, it was quite proper to rely on a Registers Direct copy, on the basis of pragmatism and also because (i) s 106 of the Land Registration etc (Scotland) Act 2012 applies to both extracts and Registers Direct copies; and (ii) Registers of Scotland has confirmed that (barring a system issue impacting on the currency of Registers Direct, which is rare) the information in an extract is not any more current than the information on Registers Direct – both are based on the state of the Land Register as of close of business the previous working day.