Registers of Scotland


Registers of Scotland is the non-ministerial department of the Scottish Government responsible for compiling and maintaining records relating to property and other legal documents. They currently maintain 21 public registers. The official responsible with maintaining the Registers of Scotland is the Keeper of the Registers of Scotland. Ex officio, the Keeper of the Registers of Scotland is also the Deputy Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland. The Keeper of the Registers of Scotland should not be confused with the Keeper of the Records of Scotland.

History of public records and registration

The first official tasked with the care and administration of the public registers was first recorded in the role of Clericus Rotulorum in the Kingdom of Scotland in 1286. Registers, rolls and records were kept in Edinburgh Castle from about the 13th century. The role of the Clerk of the Rolls eventually became known as the Lord Clerk Register, the oldest surviving great offices of state in Scotland. However, records held by the Scottish Crown did not typically include personal data such as birth, death and marriage records. Instead, the clergy and other officials of the Church of Scotland kept parish records, which recorded personal data such as baptisms and marriages, but only for their own church members so parish records were limited in scope. In 1551, a council of Scottish clergy enacted that all parish ministers should keep a record of baptisms, burials and marriages.
In 1806, a royal warrant established the office of Deputy Clerk Register, effectively reducing the record keeping duties of the Lord Clerk Register to an honorary title with no day-to-day management of the Registers and Records of Scotland. In 1854, the Deputy Clerk Register's duties were also extended to the care of the records of births, deaths and marriages in the role of Registrar General under the Registration of Births, Deaths and Marriages Act 1854, which established the General Register Office of Births, Deaths and Marriages.
The Lord Clerk Register Act 1879 further provided that the office of Lord Clerk Register would remain as a ceremonial Great Officer of State, with all record keeping duties passing to the Deputy Clerk Register. In 1909 by Sir James Patten McDougall was appointed as Deputy Clerk Register, the last holder of the combined offices of Registrar General and Deputy Lord Clerk Register. The Registrar General Act 1920 provided for the appointment by the Secretary of State for Scotland of a full-time Registrar General, separate from the Deputy Clerk Register. The recording of personal data was in effect severed from the Deputy Clerk Register, who continued to maintain the records and registers of Scotland. Dr James Crawford Dunlop, who had served as medical superintendent of statistics since 1904, first held the office of Registrar General from 1921 to 1930. The 12 subsequent registrars-general were drawn from the civil service in Scotland and headed the General Register Office for Scotland independently from the Deputy Clerk Register.
In 1928, the office of Deputy Clerk Register itself was abolished by the , becoming the Keeper of the Registers and Records of Scotland. However, it came to be recognised that the keeping of records and the keeping of registers was too cumbersome a task to be entrusted to a single department. In 1948, the provided that the Registers of Scotland and Records of Scotland were to be split into two separate government organisations with two separate officials:
  1. the Keeper of the Registers of Scotland and
  2. the Keeper of the Records of Scotland.
The Keeper of the Registers of Scotland was given the duties to maintain and preserve the [|General Register of Sasines], the [|Register of Hornings], the Register of Inhibitions and Adjudications, the [|Register of Deeds] and other chancery and judicial registers. The Keeper of the Records of Scotland, was given the duties by the Public Registers and Records Act 1948 to preserve the public registers, records and rolls of Scotland.
From 1949, the Keeper of the Registers headed the Department of the Registers of Scotland. The Keeper of the Records of Scotland headed the Records Office, later called the National Archives of Scotland. This left three departments and their respective officials managed the following:
  • Personal Data: The Registrar General and the General Register Office for Scotland.
  • Records: The Keeper of the Records of Scotland and the Records Office, later the National Archives of Scotland.
  • Registers: The Keeper of the Registers of Scotland and Registers of Scotland.

    Recent mergers

The National Records of Scotland was created on 1 April 2011 by the merger of the General Register Office for Scotland and National Archives of Scotland and is a non-ministerial government department of the Scottish Government. NRS is part of the National Collections of Scotland and falls with the ministerial portfolio of the Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Europe and External Affairs. The Registers of Scotland remain a separate organisation and fall within the ministerial portfolio of the Cabinet Secretary for Finance.

Location of the public registers

After storage in Edinburgh Castle, the registers and records were later moved to the old Parliament House at the end of the 17th century. The Laigh Parliament House became the home of the national records and registers from 1662 to 1692, was regarded as unsatisfactory and inadequate. In its place, Robert Adam was commissioned to design the building now known as Register House in Princes Street. Over time, Registers of Scotland outgrew Register House and moved to the Meadowbank House site in 1976 and as of 2013 also operates additional offices in Glasgow.

Structure

Registers of Scotland is the non-Ministerial government department statutorily responsible for registering a variety of legal documents in Scotland. It is part of the Scottish Government and is associated with the Finance and Sustainable Growth portfolio.
Registers of Scotland is headed by the Keeper of the Registers of Scotland, who is a non-ministerial office holder in the Scottish administration and who also acts as chief executive of Registers of Scotland. The keeper is appointed by the First Minister with the consent of the Lord President of the Court of Session. The keeper is accountable to the Lands Tribunal for Scotland and higher Scottish civil courts in respect of the exercise of their statutory functions. The keeper is accountable to the Scottish Ministers for achieving financial objectives as determined by them.
The keeper's main duty is responsibility for the running of Registers of Scotland and for the statutory functions placed upon her in relation to the management, control and maintenance of the following public registers of legal documents and deeds relating to property.
With a staff of over 1,200 people located in offices in Edinburgh and Glasgow, the keeper is assisted by the operations director and accountable officer. The keeper chairs the management board of Registers of Scotland which is the main decision making body. The board meets quarterly to confirm the strategic direction. The members of the board of Registers of Scotland are as follows:
  • Jennifer Henderson, Keeper of the Registers of Scotland
  • Chris Kerr, Director of Policy and Corporate Services and Accountable Officer
  • Billy Harkness, Director of People
  • Martin Burns, Director of Digital, Data and Technology
  • David Blair, Director for Customer and Business Development
  • Andrew Harvey, non-executive director
  • Andrew Miller, non-executive director
  • Mhairi Kennedy, non-executive director
  • Asim Muhammad, non-executive director
  • Elaine Melrose, non-executive director

    The public registers

The Keeper of the Registers of Scotland, known simply as the Keeper, is the Scottish Government civil servant tasked with the management of the public registers of Scotland. Today, there are now twenty one public registers under the Keeper's care. These are:

The

This is an Ordnance Survey map-based register introduced under the Land Registration Act 1979, now largely governed by the Land Registration etc. Act 2012 as the replacement to the Sasine Register. As a Torrens-based registration system, it is a register of ownership rather than a register of deeds concerning land, like the General Register of Sasines. The Land Register of Scotland is held in Edinburgh at the Registers of Scotland's offices at Meadowbank House alongside the other public registers, rather than decentralised and stored in local government registers in Scotland. It is available for public viewing online at ScotLIS – Scotland's Land Information Service and title sheets for land can be obtained via e-mail upon payment of a modest fee. In 2016, a Registers of Scotland report found that 60% of titles are on the Land Register, which is 1.6 million titles or 29% of the land mass of Scotland. Therefore 40% of titles remain to be transferred from the General Register of Sasines which equates to 1.1 million titles. The Keeper projects to be 100% by 2024 due to the closure of the Sasine Register, in a process known as the Completion of the Land Register. However, academics are sceptical that a complete closure of the General Register of Sasines can be achieved by 2024, with Gretton and Reid noting that Completion could take "centuries".

The

Early history

After the introduction of the feudal system of land tenure in Scotland under the Davidian Revolution, formal ceremonies were conducted on the land itself by a sasine ceremony, where an owner gives sasine to another. The Registration Act 1617, stipulated that the instrument of sasine required registration in order to create or transfer real rights in Scots law:
"HIS Maiestie with aduyis and consent of the estaittis of Parliament statutes and ordanis That thair salbe ane publick Register In the whiche all Reuersiounes regresses bandis and writtis for making of reuersiounes or regresses assignatiounes thairto dischargis of the same renunciatiounes of wodsettis and grantis off redemptioun and siclyik all instrumentis of seasing salbe registrat..."

The result of 1617 act was the creation of the Register of Sasines which was one of the most advanced systems of land registration at the time in Europe. The Register of Sasines operated by the registration of deeds transferring land, such as feudal grants and dispositions, being registered publicly in order to give rise to a real right of ownership under the 1617 act. Few other European countries introduced any form of registration until the 19th century and in England and Wales some areas had no system of public registration until 1990.