‘Work with us’: Land Registry renews plea over requisitions

HM Land Registry has begun the New Year with a fresh plea for conveyancers to help speed up property transactions by ensuring applications and responses to requisitions are free of ‘avoidable errors’ when they are lodged.

In the first blog of 2023, Land Registry’s deputy chief executive, Mike Harlow, said avoidable errors in applications to register property transactions was one of the main obstacles the agency faced in delivering quicker processing times.

Around one million requests for further information, known as “requisitions”, are raised a year.

Harlow said:

“We spend a lot of time checking for – and clarifying – basic administrative errors, from names spelled differently between the documents and the register, to undated deeds, missing pages, incomplete addresses or handwritten dates and so on that are impossible to read. We know how frustrating this can be for applicants.”

Requisitions can delay simple applications by an average of two weeks and more than six weeks for complex ones, Harlow said. His blog contains a detailed timeline for an actual transfer and charge application lodged in October 2021 that went “back and forth” for over a year “all because of a few avoidable requisitions”.

Harlow acknowledged that Land Registry sometimes sends unnecessary or incorrect requisitions. However, this occurred in a “minority of cases” and a recent audit found Land Registry correctly raised requisitions 97% of the time.

Land Registry is tightening up procedures through “increased, improved” in-house training, improvements to application processes and quick phone calls.

However, Harlow said:

“We are asking everyone who submits applications to work with us and please make sure that applications are free of avoidable errors when they are lodged.

“This simple quality control makes life easier and faster for all of us. It averts potential headaches such as cancellation of the application and the risk of errors in the register.

“We are already seeing that many conveyancing firms have taken steps to reduce errors in their applications and we are looking at how we can recognise and thank these firms for their efforts.”

Kindly shared by The Law Society Gazette

Main article photo courtesy of Pixabay