New reports show that take-up amongst local authorities of the Land Registry digital home sales scheme has stalled as just one in seven have signed up to the land charges register, despite cash incentives.
The Land Registry’s programme introduced four years ago to boost property sales has signed up less than 14% of council land charge schemes, it has been reported.
The programme was launched in March 2018 with the aim of enabling solicitors to conduct a “local search” for the initial LLC part of the process on a property in minutes at a low cost, compared to the traditional system where some local councils take days, or even weeks, to complete a search.
But despite a significant £26 million investment to incentivise local authorities to join the scheme, only a small number have actually signed up.
Councils are being encouraged to migrate to the digital LLC register by 2025, and will no longer hold LLC data themselves, but will be responsible for keeping their LLC information up-to-date on the new register.
Records show that just 45 local authorities are listed on the government’s website as having signed up to the scheme.
Speaking to the Negotiator, a Land Registry spokesperson said:
“Our ambition is to migrate all local authority local land charges data to the national register by 2025. 41 local authorities are already live on the Local Land Charges Register, with plans for over 20 more to join this year.
We have informed all local authorities of our delivery plan which targets regional clusters so that neighbouring authorities can support each other to migrate to the new register and maximise local economic benefits. At the moment over 150 local authorities are actively working with us or preparing their data.”
