Alasdair Lewis, director of legal services at the Land Registry, is imprecise when he states in his letter from July that 'earlier this year [the Land Registry] launched a restriction aimed at owners who do not live at the registered property which has proved extremely popular with our customers’.

The restriction he refers to is the standard form LL restriction which was in fact launched (without specific publicity) in 2005 (see The Land Registration (Amendment) Rules 2005 (SI 2005/1766)). Its 2012 'launch’ by the Land Registry was simply to make it free for use for residential owners who do not live at the property. In fact, it has been free for use for any owner, residential or commercial, since 2005 if applied for in the body of a transfer.

Quite why it took the Land Registry so long to encourage its wider use, given the 'recognition of Land Registry’s counter-fraud capabilities, experience and expertise spreading throughout the counter-fraud community’, we do not know. Perhaps it concurs in Paul Clark’s description of the restriction as 'inadequate’ .

The form of restriction creates an obstacle to fraud, and I would advise non-occupying owners to use it, but it is not an obstacle that the sophisticated fraudster cannot overcome.

Alan Riley, property law consultant, Chester