New data from HM Land Registry suggests that the number of requests for information (requisitions) have increased by more than 1% and now make up 14.75% of all applications made by the 500 companies sending the most applications to HM Land Registry. Between April and December 2018 only 13.3% of applications resulted in requisitions from HM Land Registry.

Andrew Robertson, Head of Customer Policy at HM Land Registry has said that his aim was “to provide citizens with the real picture on how well their conveyancer is performing, and to enable those same conveyancers to track their relative performance.” He added that errors ‘‘delay the conveyancing process and cost us all time and money’. The stated aim of The Land Registry is to “make conveyancing simpler, faster and cheaper for everyone”. Andrew concluded that publishing the data “supports our ambition to become the world’s leading land registry for speed, simplicity and an open approach to data, and fulfils our business strategy target.

Between January 2019 and April 2019, 854,266 applications were made to HM Land Registry. Of that number, 126,020 requisitions were returned to the conveyancer because the information provided did not give relevant detail or were inaccurate or incorrect.  From the data available it appears that many firms will be losing a lot of time and money in altering and amending the data they provide HM Land Registry. Some conveyancing firms have a requisition rate of over 50%.

HM Land Registry stated that in some cases these requisitions were not the fault of the conveyancer, but HM Land Registry using rule 17 of the Land Registration 2013 to obtain more information. Despite this, it is apparent that too many applications are facing unnecessary delays which will slow down the conveyancing process.

Redbrick Solutions Conveyancing Case Management can help prevent such errors. Land Registry forms are included at no extra cost and can be added as triggers to the workflow so that they appear automatically as a task is completed.  Forms are pre-populated to save you valuable time and are in a word document format for easy editing, enabling you to save your progress and return at a later date. Land Registry e-DRS integration enables you to access the Land Registry portal and upload documents and applications quickly and easily from within the matter and all forms are saved in the document history with a full audit trail.