HM Land Registry (HMLR) has urged conveyancers to put a stop to “avoidable errors” in applications in an effort to reduce requisitions.
In a blog post on their website, Mike Harlow, Deputy Chief Executive and Director of Customer and Strategy at HMLR, stated that one of the “main obstacles” they are facing in speeding up process times is the “avoidable errors” in applications made by conveyancers:
“We are asking everyone who submits applications to work with us and please make sure that applications are free of avoidable errors when they are lodged.”
This, says the Harlow, can be achieved through “simple quality control” which “makes life easier and faster for [everybody]”.
HMLR say requisitions currently stop over one in five transactions and total around 1,000,000 per year, more than half of which they say could be avoided:
“We spend a lot of time checking for – and clarifying – basic administrative errors, from names spelled differently between the documents and the register, to undated deeds, missing pages, incomplete addresses, or handwritten dates and so on that are impossible to read. We know how frustrating this can be for applicants.”
The average delay caused by this sits at two weeks in simple cases, and over six weeks for more complex applications – if not “significantly longer”.
Harlow says this “to-ing and fro-ing between [us] and the applicant” creates a bottleneck and drains their time and resources.
The Land Registry Deputy Chief Executive did, however, concede that HMLR do sometimes get things wrong themselves:
“We know we can send unnecessary or incorrect requisitions, but this really is a minority of cases. A recent audit of our accuracy, which has been quality checked and assured, found that 97% of the time we raise requisitions correctly.”
He added that they are helping conveyancers through “taking steps to tighten up their procedures even further” and are aiming to reduce unnecessary requisitions through “increased, improved in-house training and workshops”.
Coupled with this, the Harlow also said they are working to improve their application processes and looking at faster ways to clarify errors and omissions, for example quick telephone calls to the applicant.
Read the full blog here.
One Response
Maybe the Land Registry should also stop making unavoidable errors e.g. raising requisitions advising a TR1 is not signed by a witness when it is, putting an incorrect service address on the Register even when the original digital application submitted was correct etc. Yes these are, no doubt, human errors but it works both ways.