Amalgamation opportunity

Good day. We have the opportunity to buy a small piece of vacant land that abuts the rear of our back garden. The vacant  land has no direct access from a road and is encircled by other built houses.  Our thoughts are to amalgamate both the freehold titles held in our common names, with a view to extending our garden and installing a permitted development in the form of an appropriate granny annex. Other than the amalgamation there is no further workload on the land registry. Would these circumstances be viewed as good reason for amalgamation by land registry? 

David - There’s no legal requirement on us to amalgamate titles but our policy is to amalgamate if there’s genuine future benefit to the customer or ourselves and we have the capacity to do the extra work.  In the current situation with the delays that we currently have, our capacity to deal with the extra work is even more critical issue.

We cannot tell you now if it is a good reason or not.  You or whoever is submitting the application to change the ownership can include a request to amalgamate the titles and this will be considered at the time. 

Thank you for your prompt reply. As I interpret your reply we could therefore make any offer to purchase the land subject to the simultaneous registration and amalgamation. Will the registry accept a request that the change of ownership not be registered if the amalgamation is not approved? 

David - That's not how it works. 

The application would be submitted to us after the purchase has taken place.  So not proceeding with registration of change of ownership would not be in your interest once you have purchased the piece of land. 

Thank you.  We would not take the risk of irrevocably buying the property without some assurance that amalgamation would  take place.  A typical catch 22 situation!
 

David - You should speak to your legal advisor.

I will do - thanks for the interaction.