In short: most people need one of three things. To find out who owns a property or plot, you need the title register (£7 at HM Land Registry). To see where the boundary runs, you need the title plan (£7). To read the rights and covenants in full, you need the filed deeds the register refers to (£7 each). Everything else on this page is a variation on those three.
HM Land Registry sells nine different things to the public, with names that give almost no clue what they contain: OC1, OC2, K15, K16, LLC1, official copies, filed documents, office copies. People routinely buy the wrong one, or buy three when they needed one. This guide goes through them one at a time: what each document actually is, when you need it, and what it costs.
Every fee below is HM Land Registry's own statutory fee. We sell these documents at that fee plus 50p per document card processing, and nothing else. You can also order any of them yourself directly from gov.uk, and if that suits you better, do.
Frequently asked questions
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Which HM Land Registry document shows who owns a property?
What is the difference between the title register and the title plan?
Do I need the filed deeds as well?
Does the title plan show the exact boundary?
What if the land is not registered?
The register: who owns it, what they paid, what's against it
Title register — £7.50 from us, £7 direct from HM Land Registry.
The register is the definitive written record of a registered property. It has three parts: the Property Register (what the land is and any rights that benefit it), the Proprietorship Register (the current owner, the class of title and the price paid on the last sale if it was registered after 2000), and the Charges Register (mortgages, covenants, easements and restrictions that burden the land).
You need it when: you want to know who owns something, whether there's a mortgage on it, what was paid for it, or what restrictions bind it. It is the single most useful document HM Land Registry sells, and for most questions it is the only one you need.
You don't need it when: you only want the boundary line, or you already know the owner and need the underlying deeds.
If you would rather have the register explained than decipher it yourself, our Owner Lookup is the same official document at the same £7.50, with a plain-English summary of who owns it, the tenure, the price paid, any lender and the restrictions that actually matter.
The title plan: where the boundary runs
Title plan — £7.50 from us, £7 direct.
An Ordnance Survey extract with the registered extent of the title edged in red. It shows the general position of the boundaries, and normally nothing more.
You need it when: you want to see what land is included in a title, check whether a strip, verge or access track forms part of it, or work out which parcels a larger holding covers.
Read this before relying on it: the red line shows general boundaries, not the precise legal line. It does not tell you which side of a fence the boundary sits on, and it is not evidence in a boundary dispute. That is the single most common misunderstanding we see.
Most people want the register and the plan together: that is the Official Copy of the Register & Title Plan at £15. If you already have the register, order the plan on its own for £7.50 using the "title plan only" option on that page.
Filed deeds: the rights and covenants in full
Filed (referred) documents — £7.50 each from us, £7 each direct.
The register summarises. Where it says a covenant or right of way was created by a conveyance dated 1962, the detail lives in that 1962 document, and HM Land Registry keeps a scanned copy of it. Those are the filed or "referred" documents, ordered on form OC2.
You need them when: the register mentions a right of way, a covenant, or an easement and you need to know exactly what it says. What does the right of way permit, and for whom? Does the covenant prohibit building, or only building above a certain height? A solicitor reviewing a purchase will want these; so should you, if you are buying land whose value depends on those rights.
Two honest warnings. HM Land Registry can only supply documents it holds; very old deeds are sometimes not scanned, or were returned to the owner decades ago. And a title with no entries referring to other documents has no filed deeds to buy: our free check counts them before you pay, and if there are none, we say so rather than sell you an empty pack.
Everything at once
Complete Title Pack — from £15: the register, the title plan and every filed deed HM Land Registry holds, in one order, priced per document at cost.
You need it when: you are buying, and you want the full picture without ordering three times. It is the same documents as above; the only difference is that you get all of them and pay one at-cost price for the set.
Searches against a name, not a property
These are Land Charges searches. They look up names in a national index, not properties in the register, and they exist mainly for two situations: unregistered land, and checking whether someone is bankrupt.
Bankruptcy Search, form K16 — £6.50 from us, £6 direct, per name.
Checks the Land Charges register for bankruptcy petitions, orders and pending actions against a person's name. Lenders require one before completion. Buyers and executors use it to confirm a seller or estate is solvent. It returns a certificate saying either "no subsisting entries" or listing what is registered.
Land Charges Full Search, form K15 — £6.50 from us, £6 direct, per name.
The full version: land charges, pending actions, writs and orders registered against a name over a period you specify. This is the standard due-diligence search for unregistered land, where the burdens are recorded against former owners' names rather than against a title. If the land you are buying has no registered title, this is the search that matters.
Local Land Charges Search — £15.50 from us, £15 direct.
A different register entirely, kept by the local authority rather than HM Land Registry: conditional planning consents, tree preservation orders, conservation-area status, listed-building entries, enforcement notices and financial charges. It is a standard part of conveyancing searches, and it is the one that tells you whether the tree in the garden is protected or whether an enforcement notice is outstanding.
What you can get without paying anything
Who owns it, roughly: our property records search confirms free of charge whether a property or plot has a registered title before you order anything.
The boundary shape: INSPIRE polygons show registered land boundaries free of charge, and you can click any parcel on our map to see its shape. We wrote a guide to using them.
What the land is worth: our land valuation tool gives a guide value from HM Land Registry sold prices, with no email address required.
Planning, flood risk and constraints: these are not HM Land Registry documents at all. They come from planning.data.gov.uk, the Environment Agency and local authorities, and our Plot Report pulls 35 such checks together for a specific plot. The teaser is free; the full report is £34.
If the land is not registered
About 12% of land in England and Wales has never been registered, usually because it has not changed hands since registration became compulsory in the area. There is no register, no title plan and no filed deeds to buy: the ownership evidence is the paper deeds, held by the owner or their solicitor.
For unregistered land the useful steps are a Land Charges Full Search against the names of known former owners, a Local Land Charges Search for what the council has registered, and a Plot Report, which works on unregistered plots because planning, flood and constraint data is tied to the location rather than to a title.
Still not sure?
A short version, by what you actually want to know:
| What you want to know | What to order |
|---|---|
| Who owns this? | Title register or Owner Lookup, £7.50 |
| Where exactly does this title extend? | Title plan, £7.50 |
| Both of the above | Official Copy, £15 |
| What does that right of way or covenant actually say? | Filed deeds, £7.50 per document |
| Everything on the title | Complete Title Pack, from £15 |
| Is this seller bankrupt? | Bankruptcy Search K16, £6.50 per name |
| It's unregistered land, what's against it? | Land Charges Full Search K15, £6.50 per name |
| What has the council registered against it? | Local Land Charges Search, £15.50 |
| Can I build on it? Will it flood? | Plot Report, £34 |
If you are still unsure, reply to any of our emails or use the contact page and tell us what you are trying to find out. We would rather point you at the £7.50 document you need, or at gov.uk, than sell you the wrong thing.
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