Schedule 3: Amendment of Requirements of Writing (Scotland) Act 1995
Overview of schedule 3
266.This schedule makes changes consequential on the changes in Part 10 of the Act to the Requirements of Writing (Scotland) Act 1995.
267.Paragraphs 2 to 17 provide for a new Part 2 of the 1995 Act. The new Part 2 makes provision for the formal validity of traditional documents, which are those documents written on paper (as opposed to being electronic). Most of the paragraphs make consequential amendment on the change of label from “document” to “traditional document”. In particular, sub-paragraphs 11(ca) and (cb) and 19A apply the same rules for probativity for the recording of traditional documents in the Register of Sasines to registration in the Land Register, including an exclusion from these rules when the registration or recording of a document is required or expressly permitted by an enactment.
268.Paragraph 13 repeals section 6A of the 1995 Act. That section was inserted into the 1995 Act by section 222 of the Bankruptcy and Diligence etc (Scotland) Act 2007 to provide, in the short term, a mechanism by which a creditor could proceed with summary diligence upon a personal bond contained with a standard security created in electronic form within the Keeper’s Automated Registration of Title to Land system, given that the Books of Council and Session were open only to traditional documents. Under new section 9G of the 1995 Act, all types of electronic document become directly registrable in the Books of Council and Session provided that they meet prescribed standards, and so the provision is no longer necessary.
269.Paragraph 19 makes amendments to section 12 of the 1995 Act (the interpretation section). In paragraph (b), inserted subsection (4) provides explanation as to the meaning of certification in relation to electronic documents.
