How to read company land titles

What the land holding is

Land on Institrace is company-owned titles in England and Wales from the corporate and overseas registers we hold. A lookup is by title number, or by a company number already known. It is not a search of every word in every council minute, and it is not the whole of HM Land Registry.

Logged out, the Land page is a short public landing with a count of titles held. The title rows need a seat. The count is the holding. It is not a promise that every company-owned title in England and Wales is present.

A title record names proprietors as the register names them. Where the proprietor is a company and the company number is on the register, that number is the link. A similar company name is not the same company.

A minute is not the register

Councils write about land all the time. A Cabinet paper can mention a covenant, a lease, a site, or a disposal. Those words are in the paper. They are not a title number, and they are not the register entry. Open the register for the register. Open the minute for what the meeting published.

Do not treat a street name in a report as a title search. Title numbers have a shape. If you do not have the number, say so. Guessing a title from a place name will attach the wrong land.

The same split applies to a company. The minute may name a developer. The title may name a different company number. Both can be true. Cite each file. The guide on company numbers is the identifier rule. Council minutes is the paper rule.

A worked example

Suppose a Birmingham City Council report mentions a site. That report is a paper on the council page. It tells you the council published those words. It does not open the title.

If the report prints a title number, that number is what you look up on Land, once you have a seat. If it prints a company number as proprietor, that number is the company, not the trading name in the next sentence.

Scotland and Northern Ireland are not this register. The product is England and Wales corporate and overseas titles. Do not describe a Scottish council minute as if it were an HM Land Registry title.

What this is not

Write the title number in full when you cite it. A truncated number will collide. If the register names two proprietors, name both. If one is a company and one is not, do not drop the company number to make the sentence shorter. The number is the point of the lookup.

Overseas company titles are in the same England and Wales holding when the register says so. They are not a separate island registry. Crown Dependency papers, where we hold them, are papers of those bodies. They are not Land Registry titles. Keep the publisher in the citation. A useful land note has four fields: title number, proprietor as printed, company number if printed, and the date you read the row. Anything else is commentary and belongs below a line, marked as yours. The council paper that sent you looking can be cited next to it, with its own date and its own title. Do not merge the two dates into 'when the land moved'. The paper has a meeting date. The register has its own date. They answer different questions, and a reader who is checking your work will look them up separately. Give them both addresses. That is the whole method. If the proprietor line is an overseas company, keep the overseas name as printed and the company number as printed. Do not translate it into a UK brand you happen to know. Translation is a second claim. The register did not make it. A reader with the title number can check you in a minute. A reader with your translation cannot. Prefer the reader who can check.

It is not a map of every parcel. It is not personal home ownership. It is not evidence that a covenant was breached. It is the company-owned titles held here, looked up by the number the register uses.

Rows need a seat. Start a trial to open them.