The HM Land Registry Local Land Charges fifth annual conference took place in Birmingham recently, leaving delegates buoyed about the potential future direction of the sector.
Overwhelmingly, delegates were impressed with HMLR’s drive towards a digital future and the inherent time benefits which will be a consequence to the home buying and selling process.
Mike Harlow, the Acting Chief Executive and Chief Land Registrar, kicked off proceedings by emphasizing the journey HMLR has taken since its inception in 1862.
Currently, 87% of all land is registered and HMLR are hoping to register all publicly owned land by 2025 and achieve comprehensive registration by the end of the next decade.
Head of the LLC Programme Allison Bradbury, the driving force behind a digitized local land charges (LLC) system, offered a detailed look at the progress HMLR have made since Warwick District Council migrated over a year ago.
In total, seven local authorities have made the migration in the past 14 months. During this time, 6,500 searches have been sold.
There have also been 27,800 register views and personal searches since the inaugural migration.
In order to ensure the seven local authorities have been able to operate a smooth, efficient and accurate service, 295,160 charges have been migrated over to the digital system. Of these, 61% needed amending in some way, which highlights the extensive work taking place.
Allison Bradbury explained the extensive lessons learnt throughout the opening year with an emphasis on pre-migration becoming a priority in the future. It is hoped that this will reduce time scales moving forward.
Currently, each local authority migration is taking between eight and nine months to complete. At the current rate, it is predicted that it would take 18 years to migrate all local authorities which is why improving processes has been so important. HMLR have developed two tools to help with migration which should reduce this time. In all, there are approximately 23 million charges to migrate from the 316 English local authorities.
HMLR would like to manage between 50 and 60 migrations at any one time. However, HMLR are currently preparing 22 local authorities with nine in flight.
By the end of the next year, a target of 60 local authorities in pre-migration has been set.
The remainder of the Conference offered a detailed carousel of seminars and workshops ranging from looking at how official searches could become a priority for lenders rather than conveyancers in the future moving to exploring the development of a 3D register to help an increasingly complex property sector.
Delegates left feeling informed and inspired, confident that technology being used by HMLR and the wider property sector will only improve the customer journey during a difficult home buying and selling process.
Karina Singh, Director of Transformation, HM Land Registry, said:
“There was an excited buzz from the conveyancers, local authority staff and property experts at the LLC conference and lots of discussion about how we could all work together to make future property transactions more efficient and unlock the power of the data. We are pleased that we were able to bring together all the key players involved in the property market and demonstrate how HM Land Registry’s transformation investment is contributing to making the homebuying process quicker and simpler for all.”
