Land Registry promises to speed up searches ‘with fewer errors’
The property industry will welcome news that Land Registry is planning to make local searches more efficient, although some changes may take 10 years.
Land Registry has promised to reduce errors, and enable property owners to make simple changes to its register within 10 years.
And as part of the ‘HM Land Registry Strategy 2025+’, it pledges to “continue to digitise local land charges data faster than ever before”.
Slow and complex
Neil Sachdev, Chair of HM Land Registry, admits: “For too many, buying or selling a home – or simply accessing reliable land and property data – remains slow and unnecessarily complex. That must change.”
By 2035, Land Registry says: “We will have made it easy for people to update simple changes to their property ownership details themselves.
“We [will] have automated almost all simple requests to change the register, offering a near-instant service for home buying and selling.”
Lacking detail
Marion Silvey, Real Estate Partner with London law firm Spector Constant & Williams, says: “Whilst HM Land Registry Strategy 25+ is somewhat lacking in meaningful detail as to how and what changes will exactly be implemented, anything to speed up the process of registrations and applications to Land Registry will no doubt be very gratefully received by the property industry.
“So long as the data received remains accurate and applications dealt with correctly, a reduction in timeframes for registrations and other applications could vastly improve day-to-day timeframe transactions for developers, lenders and buyers.”
Surpassed
In March, Land Registry surpassed its target to process 95% of all applications within 12 months of submission, its annual report revealed.
The registry has a programme to move all local authorities over to digital local land charge searches, which runs alongside the phased migration of searches from local authorities to the registry.
Roxanne Barker, at conveyancing firm Fix My Legals comments, “It’s encouraging to see Land Registry acknowledging the need for faster, more accurate service as it’s long overdue. But speed alone won’t fix the bottlenecks we see daily in the conveyancing process. Unless data accuracy, transparency and joined up communication improve across every stage, we’ll simply move faster towards the same errors.
“The ambition to automate simple updates by 2035 is great in theory, but buyers, sellers and agents need tangible progress now. The conveyancing ecosystem can’t afford another decade of legacy delays and fragmented systems. Real change will come from collaboration where tech innovation, data integrity and human accountability align.
“At Fix My Legals we’re already working to bridge that gap. We can’t wait for reform; our clients expect results today. So while Land Registry’s roadmap is a step in the right direction, it’s up to the rest of us in the industry to keep driving standards, speed and service forward in real time
