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.
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 creation of easements under section 62 to reduce unintended denial of access, and statutory enlargement under section 153 (applications to convert very long leasehold to freehold, where no rent has been paid or demanded for a long period of time).
The Act followed a series of land law and policy reforms that had been begun by the Liberal government starting in 1906. This is how one American legal scholar, Morris Raphael Cohen, described it:
That which was hidden from Maitland, Joshua Williams, and the other great ones, was revealed to a Welsh solicitor who in the budget of 1910 proposed to tax the land so as to force it on the market. The radically revolutionary character of this proposal was at once recognized in England. It was bitterly fought by all those who treasured what had remained of the old English aristocratic rule. When this budget finally passed, the basis of the old real property law and the effective power of the House of Lords was gone.[a] The legislation of 1925–26 was thus a final completion in the realm of private law of the revolution that was fought in 1910 in the forum of public law, i.e., in the field of taxation and the power of the House of Lords.[3]
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Part I – General principles as to legal estates, equitable interests and powers[edit]
Section 1 sets out the basic structure of the newly reformed legal estates—"an estate in fee simple absolute in possession" (commonly referred to as freehold), and "a term of years absolute" (leasehold). Old estates in land—fee tail and life interests—are converted by s.1 so as to "take effect as equitable interests". Section 3 sets out how these equitable interests have effect.
Part II – Contracts, conveyances and other instruments[edit]
Section 70 of the 1925 Act should be considered in conjunction with schedules 1 and 3 when considering interests that override, most notably that to be in receipts of rents and profits is no longer an overriding interest.
Sections 78 and 79 concern covenants relating to land: section 78 relates to their benefit, and section 79 relates to the burdens or obligations which a covenant imposes on the covenantor, their successors in title and persons subsequently deriving title under them.
Section 84 of the Act sets out the powers of an appointed authority to alter or remove restrictive covenants on property deeds. This power was later transferred to the Lands Tribunal by the Law of Property Act 1969,[4] and subsequently to the Upper Tribunal by the Transfer of Tribunal Functions (Lands Tribunal and Miscellaneous Amendments) Order 2009.[5]
Part III – Mortgages, rentcharges, and powers of attorney[edit]
Part IV – Equitable interests and things in action[edit]
These sections govern fraud; s.172 was repealed (subject to non-application to then-pending bankruptcies) by the Insolvency Act 1985.
s.173 Every voluntary disposition of land (the main example is a gift) made with intent to defraud a later buyer is voidable at the instance of that buyer. And no such disposition shall be deemed to have been made with intent to defraud by reason only that a subsequent conveyance for valuable consideration was made, if such subsequent conveyance was made after 28 June 1893.
s.174 No acquisition made in good faith, without fraud or unfair dealing, of any reversionary (landlord's or future) interest in real or personal property, for money or money's worth, shall be liable to be opened or set aside merely on the ground of under value. In this subsection "reversionary interest" includes an expectancy or possibility. This expressly does not affect the jurisdiction of the court to set aside or modify unconscionable bargains.
Section 184 states that in cases of simultaneous death (where there is no evidence as to who lived longer), the deaths will be assumed to have occurred in order of age, oldest first.
^The Parliament Act 1911 was introduced to reduce the ability of the House of Lords to block legislation, in order to allow these budget measures to pass.
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