The Provision of Information (Contractual Control) (Registered Land) Regulations 2026 create a new disclosure regime for certain land control arrangements in England and Wales. The instrument was made on 8 June 2026, signed on behalf of the Secretary of State by Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook, approved by both Houses of Parliament under the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, and comes into force on 6 April 2027. According to the legislation.gov.uk text, parties holding specified contractual rights over registered land will have to send detailed information to HM Land Registry, and the registrar must later publish a dataset drawn from that information. The result is greater public visibility of arrangements that may otherwise be hard to identify from the register alone.
In plain terms, the regime is aimed at what the Regulations call contractual control rights. That captures four familiar deal types: options, conditional rights to compel a transfer or long lease, rights of pre-emption, and rights allowing the grantee to direct or request a disposition to itself or to another person. A relevant disposition for these purposes is a transfer of a legal estate or the grant of a lease for 15 years or more. The scope is limited to written, non-exempt rights affecting a qualifying estate in registered land, which excludes leasehold titles with fewer than 15 years left when the right is created.
The carve-outs in the Schedule are as important as the main rule. The regime does not cover contracts made for national security or defence, certain finance and security arrangements, rights held exclusively for purposes unrelated to future development of housing or buildings creating 100 square metres or more of floorspace, rights with a total control period of less than 18 months, or certain section 106 agreements relating only to infrastructure, amenities or services. That means the disclosure duty is targeted chiefly at land control arrangements used in development and promotion, rather than every contractual restriction touching land. For practitioners, the first task will be classification: deciding whether an agreement falls within one of the statutory categories and whether an exemption is available.
The reporting duty falls primarily on the grantee, meaning the person entitled to enforce the right. From 6 April 2027, the grantee must provide information within 60 days of three trigger events: the grant of the right, an assignment of the right, or a written variation that changes reportable information. The Regulations also include a transitional filing window. Where a contractual control right is granted after 8 June 2026 but before commencement on 6 April 2027, the grantee must file the required information by 6 October 2027. For landowners, promoters, developers and advisers, that creates a defined review period for live agreements signed between the making date and the start date.
The duty also attaches to registration strategy. A person applying for a notice or restriction in respect of a relevant contractual right must provide the information at the point of application if the right is within the regime, or would have been within it except that the grantor was not yet the registered proprietor when the contract was made. Once information has been filed, the obligation continues through the life of the agreement. If the right is completely or partly determined, expires, or is exercised, the grantee must notify HM Land Registry within 60 days and state which of those events has occurred. Where only part of the land is affected, the filing must identify the relevant part.
The data requirement is detailed rather than symbolic. Regulation 8 requires the names of grantor and grantee, identifying numbers for companies or other legal persons where available, the type of right, the contract date and parties, the title number, the land address, and whether the land includes airspace or other land held separately from the surface. The filing must also explain how control operates over time. The registrar must be told when the right becomes exercisable, or what conditions must first be satisfied, together with the initial period of control, any extension mechanism, any grantee entitlement to extend, and any right for either party to terminate. Where the grantor is an individual, date and place of birth must also be supplied unless the registrar accepts that the information cannot reasonably be provided.
The Regulations route the process through professional channels. Information must normally be submitted by a conveyancer using HM Land Registry's digital application routes, although the registrar may waive those requirements where insisting on them would be unreasonable. The instrument also avoids duplicate filing by providing that information already supplied under the regime does not have to be sent again. Publication starts later than filing. Regulation 9 requires the registrar to retain all submitted information and to publish a dataset as soon as possible after 6 April 2028, with updates at least once a month. Personal birth data supplied for individual grantors must not be published, but most other submitted details may appear in the dataset, subject to correction or omission where the registrar considers the material inaccurate or misleading.
Published entries may also carry status information where a right has determined, expired or been exercised, although the registrar is not required to keep ended rights in later updates. The registrar may impose access conditions on users of the published dataset, including a requirement to identify themselves before access is granted. For the public and authorities tracking strategic land assembly, the main effect is better visibility of who controls development land, over which titles and for how long. For landowners, promoters, developers and their lawyers, the immediate issue is compliance. Regulation 10 allows the registrar to refuse to register or update a notice or restriction linked to a contractual control right where the disclosure requirement has not been met, and the Land Registration Rules 2003 are amended to support that position. The explanatory material published with the instrument says no full impact assessment was prepared because no significant effect on the private, voluntary or public sector was foreseen, but in practice the scheme creates a new record-keeping and timing discipline for active market participants.