The Law of Property Act 1925
c 20 is a
statute of the
United Kingdom Parliament
The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative supremac ...
. It forms part of an interrelated programme of legislation introduced by
Lord Chancellor
The lord chancellor, formally the lord high chancellor of Great Britain, is the highest-ranking traditional minister among the Great Officers of State in Scotland and England in the United Kingdom, nominally outranking the prime minister. T ...
Lord Birkenhead between 1922 and 1925. The programme was intended to modernise the English law of
real property
In English common law, real property, real estate, immovable property or, solely in the US and Canada, realty, is land which is the property of some person and all structures (also called improvements or fixtures) integrated with or affixe ...
. The Act deals principally with the transfer of
freehold or
leasehold land by
deed
In common law, a deed is any legal instrument in writing which passes, affirms or confirms an interest, right, or property and that is signed, attested, delivered, and in some jurisdictions, sealed. It is commonly associated with transferrin ...
.
The LPA 1925, as amended, provides the core of
English land law, particularly as regards many aspects of
freehold land which is itself an important consideration in all other types of interest in land.
Background
The keynote policy of the act was to reduce the number of
legal estates to two – freehold and leasehold – and generally to make the transfer of
interests in land easier for purchasers. Other policies were to regulate mortgages and as to leases, to regulate mainly their assignment, and to tackle some of the ''
lacunae'', ambiguities and shortcomings in the law of property. Innovations included the default creati