Land Registry to hike fees but promises to end delays

In drive for digitisation, the Land Registry has warned it will be hiking fees with some charges doubling, to pay for the necessary upgrade.

Land registry fees

The Land Registry has warned there will be ‘significant rises’ across the board for its fees as it seeks to cover the huge costs of digitising its services.

As was recently reported by The Neg, Land Registry backlogs have shown little sign of improvement since the end of the pandemic, delaying sales and costing property professionals thousands of pounds.

Long delays

Forty per cent of cases are now taking more than a month to be processed and the wait for more complex cases is even longer, with sixty-four per cent experiencing delays of over a year.

Herculean task

It means many in the industry will welcome the prospect of a faster more efficient Land Registry service, although the digitisation process is being described as a ‘Herculean task’ and so the cost increases need to be equally substantial.

From the 9th of December, the fees being charged by HM Land Registry documents will be doubling and, in some cases, tripling.

The actual amounts, though, remain relatively small. For example, a search for a registered title will go from £3 to £7 for the digital version or £11 for paper; and, although the fee for a copy of a historical title is rising by 250%, in financial terms it will only go from £3 to £7.

Packaged remortgage conveyancing deals (known as ‘fixed price remortgage deals’) will go up by around £20.


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