Restrictive Covenants
Overview
A restrictive covenant is a contract in a deed between 2 landowners. One land owner (the covenantor), promises the other (the covenantee), not to carry out a specified act on the defined area of their land. For example, the covenantor cannot build on the land without getting consent from the covenantee first.
Restrictive covenants usually happen when somebody selling land wishes to restrict what the buyer can do with it. However, sometimes the vendor will agree to restrict their own use of land they are keeping. The obligation to comply with the covenants remains, no matter how often the land changes hands or how out of date the covenants seem to be.
Specification scope
Inclusions and exclusions
This dataset includes all registered land and property in England and Wales that have a restrictive covenant recorded against them. Due to data protection regulations, it excludes any personal data. It excludes details of what the restrictive covenant is. This information may be available in individual registers or in documents referred to on the register and retained by HM Land Registry.
Relationship to other HM Land Registry data products
The Unique Identifier (UID) will be consistent across HM Land Registry's datasets and allow relational links with other datasets with this attribute.
Address relationships
The UID represents an individual registered title and includes the property address from the register and the Land Registry Property Gazetteer address.
Data content and structure
Table 1 - class diagram
| Restrictive Covenants |
|---|
| Unique Identifier |
| Tenure |
| Register Property Description |
| County |
| Region |
| Associated Property ID |
| Associated Property Description |
| Change Indicator |
| Change Date |
Table 2 - Restrictive Covenants table structure
| Field name | Data type | Mandatory | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unique identifier | CharacterString | Yes | A unique reference number given to a piece of registered land |
| Tenure | CharacterString | Yes | The conditions upon which a person holds land i.e. Freehold or Leasehold |
| Register Property Description | CharacterString | Yes | The unformatted property description in the register |
| County | CharacterString | Yes | Name of current County in England and Wales |
| Region | CharacterString | Yes | Name of a geographic region which comprises one or more current counties, former counties or unitary authorities or any combination of these |
| Associated Property ID | CharacterString | No | Required to uniquely identify the Associated Property Description |
| Associated Property Description | CharacterString | No | Land Registry Property Gazetteer address associated with the Title Number. One address per row. No special formatting. Title Number is not revealed |
| Change Indicator (change only update file) |
Character | No |
Indicates the type of change made to a row in the change only update file: A indicates a new entry D indicates an entry has been removed |
| Change Date (change only update file) |
Date | No | The date of the extract |
Data quality
The dataset is made up of elements copied from HM Land Registry's database systems via an automated process. Before we release the dataset, we check it for inclusions and exclusions through a quality control process. We try to make sure our public data is accurate but cannot guarantee it is free from errors or fit for your purpose or use.
Data capture information
Restrictive covenants are entered in the register in accordance with section 32 of the Land Registration Act 2002 and rules 35 and 72 of the Land Registration Rules 2003.
Data maintenance
The published data gives a snapshot of land and property that has a restrictive covenant recorded at the point of monthly extraction.
Data product delivery
Access to the dataset
Two files will be published from the 6th working day of the month.
The data is published in both a monthly complete file and a change only update file which shows the changes made in the dataset since the previous month.
Once the full dataset has been downloaded, the UID allows the user to maintain the data by adding the change only update to the full dataset each month. Alternatively, the user can download the full dataset again, which also contains all changes made to date.
Granting access
You'll need to create an account on the Use Land and Property Data service.
To create the account, you'll need to provide some information about yourself. We collect and hold personal and non-personal information, which may be validated, to identify who has requested the data. For more information about how HMLR handles personal data, see the Personal information charter.
There are 3 different licences for this dataset. You have to choose which licence you need based on how you're going to use the data. Once your account has been approved and you've agreed to the correct licence, you can sign in to the service to access the data.
File structure
The data is provided as a .CSV file. The data in each file will:
- use a comma to separate each field: ',' (ASCII 44)
- enclose all fields within double quotes: “ ” (ASCII 34)
- send blank fields without a character between double quotes: “ ”
- have a date format of YYYY-MM-DD. For example, 14 December 2013 will be shown as 2013-12-14
- use UTF-8 encoding (the way characters are coded for websites)
- have line separation removed
- have the column heading name as the first row
- have the row count as the last row
File name
The file names will be structured as follows:
- Monthly full extract
- file name: RES_COV_<FULL>_<YYYY>_<MM>.csv
- Monthly change only update (COU)
- file name: RES_COV_<COU>_<YYYY>_<MM>.csv
File management
The current full file and current change only update file will be available for download each month.
Contact information
If you have any feedback or questions about this data, contact us:
Telephone
- Telephone: 0300 006 0478
- Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm
- data.services@mail.landregistry.gov.uk
- We aim to respond within 2 working days