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The Law of Property Act was brought into effect on 01 January 1926. Pinder Sahota takes a look back upon this landmark piece of legislation.
Ten Greatest Hits from a Legal Centenarian
The year is 1925: cloche hats are all the rage, telegrams are high tech and the Law of Property Act 1925 ("LPA 1925") makes its grand entrance; ready to usher a new era of property transactions. Fast forward a century, and LPA 1925 is still with us to blow out an impressive 100 candles and frankly, it's still ready to party! So, put on a fancy hat, raise your glass to Britain's favourite legal centenarian, and join me for a whirlwind tour of the LPA's ten showstoppers... all served with a splash of fizz.
1. The Great Estate Slim-Down (Section 1)
Before 1925, English land law had a slightly chaotic "everything must go" feel, with a bewildering variety of legal estates cluttering up the system. Section 1 trimmed them to two: freehold (yours outright) and leasehold (temporary, but respectable). That's your basic modern menu: own it or hold it. Legal easements (rights over someone else's land) and charges (your friendly neighbourhood mortgage) also found their place in the world.
2. Follow the Money (Section 2)
Section 2 is where the Act reveals its core mechanism. Where a purchaser for value acquires a legal estate without notice of an equitable interest, that equitable interest does not continue to burden the title. Instead, it is overreached: it is detached from the land and transferred to the proceeds of sale.
Put simply, the beneficial interest follows the money rather than the land.
3. Deeds or Disaster: (Sections 52 and 53)
Sections 52 and 53 are the ones that insist – if you're dealing with land – that you really do need to write it down properly. Generally, conveyances of land (and most interests) must be in writing and signed as a deed. It's the grown-up paperwork that turns "agreed in the pub" into "validly transferred an interest in land."
4. The Great Rights Scooper (Section 62)
Section 62 kindly saves lawyers from having to list every last gate, path and odd little right that comes with land. It provides that a conveyance of land includes existing easements, and other associated rights enjoyed with the land (even if they're not quite full-blown easements yet)
Even better (or more alarming, depending on your position), those "nearly easements" can be elevated into legal easements by the operation of Section 62. Because of that transforming power, parties sometimes decide to exclude Section 62 expressly and they often do.
5. Cutting Through Old Restrictions (Section 84)
Section 84 hands the Court a pair of careful legal scissors and gives it power to modify or discharge restrictive covenants. Broadly, that can happen where the covenant becomes obsolete or changing /removing it would not cause injury. In 1969, public interest joined the list as an additional reason to intervene.
Despite its long life, Section 84 didn't reach the Supreme Court until 2020. When it did, the Court told the First-tier Tribunal to adopt a cautious approach when exercising this discretion. A developer, who had relied on its own rather cynical behaviour to build social housing in breach of a restrictive covenant, could not then turn around and claim that what it had done was in the public interest and so should be forgiven.
6. Goodbye Entails, Hello Inheritance Freedom (Section 130)
For anyone who's sympathised with Mrs Bennet in Pride and Prejudice lamenting the entail that prevented her daughters from inheriting the family estate, Section 130 offers a measure of retrospective consolation.
Although it arrived some 125 years too late to be of any assistance to her, it marked the end of the fee tail. This device had long been used to lock land into a prescribed line of succession, excluding daughters and many others from inheritance. Section 130 brought that practice to an end, replacing rigid hereditary control with far greater freedom in the disposition of land.
7. Assignment with a Checklist: (Section 136)
Section 136 is the part of the Act that says: if you're going to assign the benefit of a debt or contractual right, let's do it properly and keep things certain.
To be a valid legal assignment, it must be absolute (not conditional or partial) be in writing, be signed by the assignor and have notice given to the other party (or parties) to the contract.
Tick those boxes and you get a clear, streamlined assignment simplifying enforcement and avoiding argument.
8. The Section 146 Notice: A Classic, If Not Catchy
In the competition for least imaginative legal name, the "Section 146 Notice" is a perennial finalist. But what it lacks in flair it makes up for in importance.
The notice is what a landlord must serve on a tenant who's breached their lease. If the tenant doesn't remedy the breach (where it's capable of remedy), that notice unlocks the landlord's right to forfeit the lease.
Not glamorous, but central to lease enforcement.
9. When a Lease Grows Up into a Freehold (Section 153)
At some point, an exceptionally long lease begins to look less like a temporary arrangement and more like ownership in all but name. Section 153 recognises this awkward adolescence and, in carefully limited circumstances, allows the lease to graduate into a freehold.
To qualify, the lease must be impressively long-lived and impeccably behaved. It will generally: have been granted for at least 300 years; still have a reassuring 200 years or more to run; demand only a nominal rent, largely for tradition's sake; and leave the landlord with no dramatic exit in the form of forfeiture.
Where those boxes are ticked, the law effectively shrugs and says what everyone is already thinking: this is no mere lease. It is treated as having earned its freehold status.
10. The Insightal Owl (Section 196)
Think of Section 196 as that steadfast but slightly old fashioned relative; still swears by paper post, never heard of WhatsApp and is positively scandalised by the idea of "serving by email".
Under Section 196, notices to tenants and mortgagors must be in writing; and either left at the recipient's last known or registered address, or sent by registered post to that address. Choose the registered letter option, and any notice is "deemed served" when it should arrive not when it does. Lost in the post? That still counts, unless it boomerangs back to you.
The cold truth: as wonderful as Section 196 is (and bless its cotton socks!), it wasn't written with international landlords and pop-up offices in mind. Serving a notice by email? Section 196 would clutch its pearls.
So, you'll notice (pun intended) more contracts nudging section 196 aside in favour of bespoke clauses. Some even let you serve a notice by email (gasp!) or specify a UK address, even when those involved are sunbathing abroad.
A century on, the LPA 1925 remains elegant, practical, and indispensably dandy. A legal centenarian that still knows how to throw a party.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
