Building Societies and the Unsuspected Hazard

Abstract

In the welter of case law over the last ten years or so concerning mortgages, trusts, beneficial interests, overriding claims and registered titles there are not many certainties that ingenious counsel have not tried to turn into questionable claims. And in many cases, quite rightly too. In a world of cardboard cities, homeless young, rapidly rising requests for possession orders by Building Societies, Banks and Insurance Companies, the stark realisation that the first of the centuries great and world wide calamities will not produce the homes fit for heroes that had been promised, even by the end of the century, is chillingly apt. In such circumstances, courts are bound to be pressed with the claim that they ought to do everything possible to prevent evictions. It was, of course, this type of claim that found favour with Lord Scarman in his robust judgment in Williams & Glyns Bank v Boland.' But there is another argument; Elnance capital can only be raised where a certain amount of 'security' is available. In particular, the lenders to the lenders of would be house-purchasers need to know that their stake is secure in land and buildings. Otherwise, they might not lend. So that the equally robust judgment of Lord Oliver in City of London Building Society v Flegg2 is, to an extent, only stating the obvious when it remarks: