HM Land Registry are considering the publication of comparative conveyancer data to provide clients with a clearer picture of how their service provider is performing.
Forming part of their Five Year Business Strategy, the potential release of this information will be to utilise existing datasets and improve public accessibility. This was pushed for in the Government’s Housing white paper earlier this year.
As well as providing greater clarity for consumers, HMLR also state that the data will be useful for professionals, enabling firms to track their relative performance against one another, and potentially act as an incentive to improve this.
Research undertaken by HMLR also indicated that further release of data that they hold could help to speed up the process as well as cutting the risk of a transaction falling through.
The Business Strategy can be accessed here.
One Response
Great news
I have used HMLR’s excellent property alert system to check how long it takes buyers’s conveyancers to submit applications for registration. The requirement to do so before a search expires seems to be widely ignored. Even by those displaying a conveyancing quality icon.
I see nothing to stop someone thinking of instructing a particular conveyancer from raising a freedom of information enquiry on their record now. HMLR might find it easier to publish such information for all proactively.
Information in general is already available from HMLR . EG Whether conveyancers do sufficient transactions to keep their hand in. There is scope for the comparison industry to analyse and publish this now.
The Government gives conveyancers a monopoly over reserved matters. The quid pro quo should be consumer friendly presentation of government-held information about conveyancer’s performance