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To all HM Land Registry users and customers
The last few years have seen remarkable activity in the property market and great resilience among the professionals who serve it. HM Land Registry received around 1.5 million more applications in 2021 than in 2019. I am very aware of the pressure this has placed on all of you.
Throughout this period we have been broadly able to maintain the speed of all those services that are required to enable property transactions to take place. In addition to this, more types of post-completion applications can now be expedited, to avoid problems where there is an urgent need for the registration to be completed. We are processing around 1,000 of these expedited applications each day, with 95% completed within 10 working days.
We know that other post-completion applications, such as registering new ownership, are taking much longer than you would like. We also know that some customers, such as those buying and selling complex sites, face longer delays, and we are working with them to improve their situation. Our overall output is higher today than it was three years ago, before the pandemic hit, but it has still not been able to keep pace with the rapid increase in applications that we’re receiving.
You can find our current processing times on GOV.UK which are updated monthly.
I would like to apologise for the inconvenience and frustration that I know this can cause you and your clients. Fixing this remains our top priority.
Recruiting more caseworkers
We are halfway through the recruitment of 800 new caseworkers – the highest number for many years and the culmination of a five-year programme. We have also overhauled our processes and invested heavily in training. Our hybrid working arrangements and continuous improvement programmes enable all our teams to collaborate across the country using both our offices and remote technology to maximise their effectiveness. This has been – and remains – a long-term programme, but we are starting to reap the benefits with more applications completed each month.
Automating our services
In the longer term, the challenge we face is to become more flexible, resilient and responsive to a market which will always be volatile. Land registration skills and expertise take time to build, so we cannot easily flex our capacity to meet the fluctuating activity in the property market. Only digitisation and automation of the simpler parts of our processes can meet that challenge. This will be more reliable and predictable, deliver much faster turnaround times, and drive down the cost to us all of avoidable requisitions.
Our aim, therefore, is to automate most of the simple applications. We will then be able to re-focus our caseworkers on to those applications that require their expert input and judgement, further bringing down service times.
Our new Digital Registration Service on the HM Land Registry portal will be complete this year. To support this, we have developed a new internal casework system, and restructured much of the Land Register to make it machine readable.
We’re already seeing 30% increased efficiency from our new internal caseworker system. We have also seen a 25% reduction on simple, time-consuming errors – such as discrepancies in name – on applications submitted using the Digital Registration Service.
This next phase of our strategy will transform the process of land registration in England and Wales, embedding outstanding customer service at the heart of what we do. It will place us among the most modern and effective systems anywhere in the world.
We also want to support improvements in the sector as a whole. For example, we can set practice and policy requirements that will influence the adoption of digital technology. We have already had success in this area in relation to digital identification and e-signature standards.
In collaboration with others, we want to improve dramatically the experience for all those involved in the property market, including homebuyers and sellers, and unlock value in a way that has never happened before.
I look forward to delivering this together.
Best wishes
Simon
Simon Hayes
Chief Executive and Chief Land Registrar
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