The Web of Evil

At a time when quite a lot of families are facing the possibility, distant or immediate, of losing their home, and when friends of mine face a dire lack of choice when moving house with their families, trust a Tory peer to reflect the public’s main concerns:

Lord Dixon-Smith: The other oddity I have come across recently arose at the Land Registry. I declare an interest as a property owner, and it was my own circumstances that produced this question; it is not particularly related to this issue, but it is an interesting one. The Land Registry is the other half of the search side that has to be done on a property and its attitude can sometimes be different from that of the local authority. I was not aware of this until I put a property on the market. The property is and always has been two separate cottages, but they are semi-detached on one side. The local authority, quite properly, has two charges on them—they are both rated separately, all the services charges are separate and so on—but, because I am one owner, the Land Registry says that there is only one property. It is an interesting little conundrum.