THE Registers of Scotland has said new legislation will help prevent new homes being built in the wrong place and buyers being stranded without valid title deeds.

RoS was responding to The Herald's reports detailing how four West Lothian families are still do not own homes in Happy Valley Road, Blackburn, they bought 14 years ago.

RoS said: "Where a problem does arise RoS have no legal locus to intervene - it is absolutely for the purchaser's solicitor and the developer to resolve."

In response to a Freedom of Information request this year from a consultant, RoS said it "could draw potential anomalies to the attention of the submitting solicitor".

But if resolution was not achieved within a certain timescale, it was "entitled" to proceed with registration.

In this case, some 15 months elapsed between RoS notifying solicitors and registering the land, on which four houses partially stood, to a developer. There followed 11 years of litigation, which ended in May 2013.

The agency said: "However, RoS does not want the problem to arise in the first place and that is why we have been promoting DPA (development plan approval)." DPA would provide the developer and any prospective purchaser with an assurance over the developer's title, and would not trigger additional costs for the buyer.

RoS said the Land Registration (Scotland) Act 2012, not yet in force, had a general aim "to make conveyancing and registration safer for those involved in the housing market".

A statutory duty of care would "require solicitors to ensure applications are legally correct before they are submitted to the Keeper".

However, The Herald has now been made aware of a Scottish buyer who has no title to a flat worth over £300,000, more than 10 years after buying it. The seller took the cash before becoming bankrupt, and the trustee has yet to establish their right to the property.

A family member said: "My relative has been subjected to years of stress, ill-health, and mounting legal bills which could easily bankrupt him - ironically to pay the debts of a bankrupt - and faces potential ­homelessness. Where is the justice, and where is ­solicitors' responsibility in all of this?"

He added: "A property buyer should not be required to hand over money for a property without clear title for it being delivered at the same time."

The case echoes our report in April 2010 of the Lanarkshire couple who gained title to their £340,000 home only after a protracted four-year legal wrangle with the trustee to the seller, who had signed a trust deed immediately after pocketing the cash.

In that case, the couple said the trustee had taken too long, while the trustee said the fault lay with solicitors on both sides. The Law Society of Scotland said solicitors took personal responsibility for covering any "gap", and delivering a registered title, and were indemnified accordingly.

The Accountant in Bankruptcy said a debtor in such a case had "no right to sell the property".