Pulse.Assent

Two Sheffield men who seriously assaulted and imprisoned a vulnerable victim have had their sentences increased after the Solicitor General, Robert Buckland QC MP, appealed them for being too low.

Matthew Ward, aged 22 at the time and Marcus Cullumbine, then aged 20, befriended the 40-year-old vulnerable victim first and took increasing advantage of him. In 2017 they moved in with him, and gradually asserted their control. One of the offences involved Ward punching the victim in the face after alleging he owed him money for disposing of a box of latex gloves. In a later incident, the victim was kept in a cupboard for five hours while Ward’s friends visited the home. The victim feared being assaulted again if he didn’t comply by staying in the cupboard.

The most serious of the attacks on the victim started when he was locked in the cupboard again – this time the offenders put bolts on the outside of the cupboard to stop him getting out. He was later punched in the face, kicked in the head, attacked with a Stanley knife and burnt with various weapons. The victim was then locked in the cupboard overnight. He managed to escape the next day after claiming he had to collect a prescription and not doing so would raise suspicions. The offenders let him leave to go to the chemist but threated to hurt his brother if he reported the attacks. The chemist called the emergency services who found that the victim had serious wounds including broken ribs and extensive burns.

Ward was originally sentenced to 16 years, Cullumbine to 11 years. Today, after the Solicitor General’s action, the Court of Appeal increased Ward’s sentence to 19 years, and Cullumbine’s to 13 and a half years.

Speaking after the hearing, the Solicitor General said:

I am pleased that the Court of Appeal has increased the sentences today. The offenders exploited the victim’s vulnerability and subjected him to a series of brutal assaults while imprisoning him in his own home. I hope that their sentences send a clear message to anyone despicable enough to consider abusing a vulnerable member of their community – you will not escape justice.

HM Land Registry is building the foundations for a national Local Land Charges (LLC) Register and will over the coming year be working with 26 local authorities in England to migrate their LLC records to a centralised digital register, which will launch later this year and benefit up to 125,000 homebuyers in 2018 to 2019.

The new digital register will eliminate regional variations in the speed, format and costs of LLC searches, a vital part of the property buying process. Online search results will be available instantly in a range of formats to suit the customer.

Chief Executive and Chief Land Registrar Graham Farrant said:

In today’s world, people expect to be able to access government information online quickly and easily, and for a reasonable fee.

A national Local Land Charges service will achieve that.

HM Land Registry has a track record for modernising land-related systems and is very pleased to be taking on the delivery of the national Local Land Charges digital register. This is a significant step forward in the Government’s ambition to make the house-buying process simpler, faster and cheaper.

Most LLCs are restrictions or obligations such as listed status, tree preservation orders or notice of a conservation area. A search of these is normally required in the process of buying a home. Currently, each local authority maintains an LLC register for its administrative area and the records are held in a variety of formats such as paper, electronic and digital. Prices vary considerably, ranging from £3 to £76, and it can take up to 30 days to deliver the search results. This has led to an inconsistent service for customers depending on their postcode.

This first phase of migration will establish the foundations for the national Local Land Charges service and help HM Land Registry understand better how it can make further migration of more local authorities’ LLC records simpler and faster, while using the data more effectively.

HM Land Registry will be keeping customers up to date when each local authority’s LLC records are migrated to the new digital register and when search requests can be made using our centralised service.

Notes to editors

1. The Government response to the consultation on the draft Local Land Charges rule has been published today.
2. The Infrastructure Act 2015 makes provision for the transfer of responsibility for Local Land Charge (LLC) registers from 326 English local authorities to HM Land Registry.
3. Common obligations protected as local land charges include:
   – planning permissions
   – listed buildings
   – conservation areas
   – tree preservation orders
   – improvement and renovation grants
   – smoke control zones
   – light obstruction notices
4. Some of the English local authorities taking part in phase one include (not an exhaustive list):
   – Blackpool Council
   – City of London Corporation
   – East Lindsey District Council
   – Council of the Isles of Scilly
   – Liverpool City Council
   – London Borough of Lambeth
   – Norwich City Council
   – Peterborough City Council
   – Sefton Council
   – St Helens Council
   – Warwick District Council
5. HM Land Registry will provide LLC search results in a variety of formats, such as:
   PDF – Portable Document Format
   XML – Extensible Markup Language
   JSON – Javascript Object Notation
6. According to HM Land Registry data assessments, there are 25 million LLC records held across England.
7. HM Land Registry safeguards land and property ownership worth in excess of £4 trillion, including around £1 trillion of mortgages. The Land Register contains more than 25 million titles showing evidence of ownership for more than 85% of the land mass of England and Wales
8. HM Land Registry’s mission is to guarantee and protect property rights in England and Wales. HM Land Registry is a government department created in 1862. It operates as an executive agency and a trading fund and its running costs are covered by the fees paid by the users of its services. Its ambition is to become the world’s leading land registry for speed, simplicity and an open approach to data.
9. For further information about HM Land Registry visit www.gov.uk/land-registry.
10. Follow us on: Twitter @HMLandRegistry, our blog, LinkedIn and Facebook.