Editing Escheat (section)

====Registration of Crown land====

One consequence of the [[Land Registration Act 1925]] was that only [[Estate in land|estates in land]] (freehold or leasehold) could be registered. [[Crown land]], i.e., land held directly by the Crown – also known as property in the ''royal [[demesne]]'' – is not held under any residual feudal tenure (the Crown has no historical overlord other than, for brief periods, the [[Pope|papacy]]), and there is therefore no estate to register. This had the consequence that freeholds which escheated to the Crown ceased to be registrable. This created a slow drain of property out of registration, amounting to some hundreds of freehold titles in each year.

The problem was noted by the [[Law Commission]] in their report "Land Registration for the Twenty-First Century". The [[Land Registration Act 2002]] was passed in response to that report. It provides that land held in demesne by the Crown may be registered.