Highland Titles IPSO Ruling- Souvenir Land plots

[Amethyst]

I've been following this a bit on Twitter and it makes an interesting read on Press articles and the ASA

https://www.ipso.co.uk/IPSO/rulings/...il.html?id=118Findings of the Committee

12. The Committee understood the complainant’s concern about the use of the claim “Highland laird wannabes [have been] fooled into thinking they have bought Scottish land in multi-million-pound global scheme.” The article had provided the basis for the claim, which included that customers would understand that they had “bought a plot of land” in the sense that this is ordinarily understood, when in fact title in the land had not passed to the customer, and it was not possible for a customer to register the sale at the Land Registry. The newspaper had contacted Highland Titles prior to publication, and had also included in the article the company’s position that “our customers obtain a personal right to the land, we make our sales on the advice of our Scottish solicitors and the Advertising Standards Authority are satisfied that we make that sufficiently clear on our website.” The Committee noted that the questions and answers page of the company’s website demonstrated that some customers had been confused about the nature of the land transaction and that the company had revised some of the pages of its website to make the position clearer following publication of the article. In all the circumstances, the Committee considered that the central claim of the article represented the newspaper’s characterisation of some customers’ confusion arising from the lack of clarity that had previously been provided by the company as to precisely what interest their customers acquired in the land. This interpretation did not raise a breach of Clause 1.

13. Further, while it was accepted that customers received a gift set, as opposed to “nothing”, the article clearly related to the legitimacy of the company’s main product, which is souvenir plots of land. It was not significantly misleading in this context to omit that they receive a gift set. This omission did not breach Clause 1.

14. While the claim that Dr Bevis lived in Spean Bridge was evidently inaccurate, it was not a central claim in the article, and Dr Bevis did live in the Highlands until 2006. The inaccuracy was not significant and did not require correction.

15. The Committee found that the newspaper was entitled to report that Highland Titles “claims to plough the profits into conservation”. The company does make such a claim and, given that it does not publish the relevant accounts which would show its contributions to conservation efforts in financial terms, the way in which the newspaper presented this information did not raise a breach of Clause 1.

16. Lastly, the Committee found that, given that Highland Titles is wholly owned by the charitable Trust, and Dr Bevis runs Highland Titles, it was not significantly inaccurate to state that “Bevis…runs the firm through a charity.” There was no breach of Clause 1 on this point.

17. While the Committee welcomed the newspaper’s prompt offer to publish a correction, it was not required in order to fulfil the newspaper’s obligations under the Editors’ Code.


Date decision issued: 06/05/2015

[Amethyst]

Re: Highland Titles IPSO Ruling- Souvenir Land plots

ASA made another ruling today - this time on Tullock Farm Enterprises - https://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjud...x#.Vp9HzFJvAgY

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted that, at the time the ad was seen by the complainant, it stated "Buy Scottish Land", "Buy your land" and "carries with it the Title, and full rights of ownership" and we considered that consumers were likely to interpret that to mean they were acquiring a "real right" of ownership. Whilst we welcomed change to the ad by Tulloch Farm Enterprises, we noted that "Buy Scottish Land" and "Buy your land" continued to appear and were headline claims. We considered that the impression given by those claims was that consumers would be buying land in the usual way, which we considered most consumers would understand to be with full rights of ownership. We noted the explanatory text in the FAQ section and on another page of the website, but considered it was not sufficiently prominent to counter the impression that consumers could purchase land with full rights of ownership from Tulloch Farm Enterprises and therefore contradicted the headline claims.

We noted that the solicitors' letter and barrister's opinion both explained that the purchase of small souvenir plots of land, such as the ones offered by Tulloch Farm Enterprises, created a beneficial ownership, but not a "real right" of ownership. They explained that a "real right" of ownership could only be obtained by registration of the property in the Land Register (which was not permitted for souvenir plots of land) and that only a "real right" was enforceable against third parties. We therefore understood that beneficial ownership did not provide the same rights as full legal ownership.

We considered that because the impression given by the ad was that customers would acquire full legal ownership of the plots of land, when that was not the case, the ad was misleading.

The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising).
Action

The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Tulloch Farm Enterprises Ltd to ensure they did not state or imply that consumers were purchasing land with full rights of ownership, if that was not the case.