Ordnance Survey’s land and property development market development lead, Isabelle Chatel de Brancion, explains why it’s not only providing property data earlier to conveyancers that will avoid delays. It needs to be trusted, connected and consistently applied through every transaction.
Chasing information is an all-too-familiar part of a property transaction for conveyancers. Information arrives at different stages, from different sources and in different formats. Critical time is lost finding it, checking it and ensuring it relates to the right property, often before any substantive legal work can properly begin.
The government’s Home Buying and Selling Reform Roadmap, published in June, is the latest opportunity to tackle these delays. The scale of the challenge is significant. Once an offer is accepted, transactions currently take around 120 days on average, with around one in three falling through. That journey now lasts around 60% longer than it did in 2007. When compared with waiting times in the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, transactions in England and Wales are weeks’ slower.
A central principle of the new roadmap is that more information should be available upfront. That would be a major help and widely welcomed by the industry. But the potential benefit is not simply having more information. It must make sure property data is trusted, connected and easy to use throughout the transaction.
Data must also be capable of being confidently connected to the right property from the outset.
Making property data easier to connect to
With the government looking to digitise more elements of the home buying process, connecting land ownership and location data is increasingly important.
OS and HM Land Registry are already working together on this challenge. Earlier this year, both organisations signed a three-year collaboration agreement to make property and location data easier to access, connect and use across government.
The partnership aims to reduce friction in the property market by creating stronger links between trusted land ownership data and authoritative location data.
OS data is already used daily by more than 4,500 HM Land Registry caseworkers and underpins the mapping shown on Land Registry title plans.
This interoperability between datasets means government can support faster property transactions.
Are we all talking about the same property?
There is another risk to consider, one that is often deceptively simple to solve. How sure are we that different systems all refer to the same property?
Take a newly built block of flats. A property may be recorded differently by a developer, or a local authority, or even a postal system. Data relating to an individual flat must also be distinguished from data about the wider building it sits in.
This is where common identifiers matter. A Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) provides a persistent identifier for every addressable location in Great Britain and enables information held in different datasets to be linked and exchanged more consistently.
At OS, we help organisations access and connect trusted property information. Datasets such as OS AddressBase Premium bring together UPRNs, local authority addressing, Royal Mail postal addresses and geospatial context, helping different organisations work together from a single source of truth. A forthcoming release will also include Royal Mail’s Not Yet Built and Multiple Residence information, to support a more joined-up view of property and address information.
This can have practical benefits for conveyancers. It can reduce time spent validating records and reconciling information from multiple sources, while providing greater confidence that the data relates to the correct property and can be reused again and again.
Sales packs and AI
This year the government is working with industry to identify information that can already be provided voluntarily before legislation. Longer term, the intention is for sales packs to be prepared before a property is listed, including searches and a property condition report, and for digital sales packs and logbooks to become standard features of transactions.
AI adds another dimension. The Government sees potential for AI to automate routine activities, including document classification, triage and data extraction, while preserving human judgement for decisions. It also plans to work with the Digital Property Market Steering Group (DPMSG) to establish standards for the appropriate use of AI in conveyancing technologies.
But faster processing increases the importance of trusted inputs. If AI extracts or compares information in seconds, conveyancers still need to know where that information came from, how current it is, which property it relates to and whether the output is sourced information or an inference.
AI will only be effective if the underlying property information has provenance and can be trusted.
A welcome shift in the conveyancer’s role?
The government’s Home Buying and Selling Reform offers something more significant than simply digitising today’s transaction. It provides an opportunity to rethink how property data flows through it.
If property information is made available earlier, connected consistently, shared securely and reused rather than repeatedly sourced and reconciled, conveyancers would see much more value. It would lead to fewer hours chasing information and more time applying the professional judgement and advice that their clients’ trust. Ultimately it would give buyers and sellers in England and Wales greater confidence, more opportunity to unlock investment, and a stronger chance for economic growth.
About the author
Isabelle Chatel de Brancion is a RIBA-qualified architect and Executive MBA graduate from London Business School, now leading market development for Land & Property at Ordnance Survey. With a career spanning architecture, entrepreneurship, and innovation, Isabelle brings a unique blend of creative vision and strategic insight to the geospatial sector.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of Today’s Conveyancer.
