Since 1862 Land Registry has evolved and developed to give the public confidence in the land ownership, in its latest annual report its clear that this remains a paramount concern but commercial matters are pressing.
The key positive message for conveyancers from Land Registry’s annual report is that it is trying to reduce its costs and this reduces the risk of an increase in fees charged to consumers through a revised fee order but the report tries to deal with a number of other competing interests as well. The question remains whether this cost cutting will be successful in avoiding a damaging need to increase its revenue through higher fees. Last year the deficit in delivering the services was £30M which has been reduced to £3M. This was a significant achievement.
With workloads falling 13% we welcome the decision by Land Registry to close the York, Portsmouth, Stevenage and Tunbridge Wells offices. The head office has been relocated from Lincoln’s Inn Fields and the staff count has been reduced significantly however it will come as no surprise that whilst nearly 90% of applications are processed within 15 working days answering the phone quickly missed its target of less than 15 seconds with average response times of 26 seconds.
Malcolm Dawson, Chief Land Registrar and Chief Executive said:
"In the past year the property market has continued to contract resulting in our workload decreasing by 13 per cent. Despite this, we have achieved a number of challenging targets including those for speed and accuracy as well as our financial key performance indicators (KPIs). We have also scored some notable successes, not least in the rapid expansion of our network of customer teams providing a dedicated service to business users.
Under our accelerated transformation programme (ATP), we’ve reduced the average number of staff by 18.7 per cent and we are on track with our estate restructuring. Inevitably the changes have been difficult and painful but we are progressing ahead of the original schedule and will deliver net savings of over £500m. In comparison with last year (£30.1m) and the year before (£130m), we made a loss of £2.9m which demonstrates that the hard decisions we took are now bearing fruit in providing financial stability.
The percentage of transactions delivered through electronic channels continued to increase with over 70 per cent of lenders using our electronic discharges service and over 85 per cent of preliminary services being delivered through portal. However, as the response to our consultation paper (also published today) shows, customers and stakeholders still have a concern about the use of electronic signatures and transfers.
After listening to a wide range of people, we are now focusing on electronic lodgement and despatch. We believe this solution whereby customers can use e-channels to send us paper documents, is practical, sensible and in tune with their needs. As a result, we are writing off development expenditure relating to electronic charges, signatures and transfers and making a number of other accounting adjustments in the annual report to better reflect the current status of our services. Over a six year period we have invested £41 million to successfully deliver a suite of e-services including portal, e-security and business gateway. However, following the feedback it is clearly better to halt development of e-transfers now, before significant further sums are expended, than to continue to develop a product we are not confident our customers will use.
We have missed some targets including the KPIs for overall customer service and employee engagement, which is why they are a particular focus for improvement in the coming year. I want to engage our people more fully in delivering these targets so that we can all look forward to celebrating Land Registry’s 150th anniversary in 2012 with confidence."
Many practitioners will agree with the decision to halt development on e-transfers given the high costs, inefficient processing and risk associated with the proposed e-charge system that was proposed without sufficient engagement with interested parties.
Feedback to Today’s Conveyancer also welcomes the customer teams initiative enabling many conveyancers to deal with one Land Registry office and team rather than multiple offices enabling firms to save on time and costs.
The jury remains out as to whether the new Customer and Market Insight Team will actually convince the powers that be within Land Registry to deliver what conveyancers want and need.
Whilst there was a significant reduction in complaints to 3217 from 4183 the previous year it is interesting to note that many “concerns arose about security of the register following publicity issued by third parties offering title theft protection services” and payments against the indemnity increased from £7.7M to £9.4M. Provisions for contingent liabilities have also been more than doubled to £67M
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