Progress on plans to digitise the property property market has been shared by the Digital Property Market Steering Group (DPMSG) ahead of an anticipated second version of their Roadmap which is expected to be published in the coming weeks.
DPMSG is a collaboration of government, regulators, membership bodies and pressure groups who all have a role to play in the property market; including the Law Society, The Council for Licensed Conveyancers, and the Solicitors Regulation Authority, as well as the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, Propertymark, Building Societies Association and HM Land Registry. It was launched in September 2023 with the purpose to
“help the property market work better for all by accelerating the adoption of digital technology, while ensuring it is transparent, secure and consumer friendly, through collaboration and innovation across the sector.”
In its first version, DPMSG said there were five key objectives for the collaboration group
- Use up front information to reduce the number of surprises and reduce delays to transactions.
- Achieve shareable and certified ID to reduce the number of duplications
- Create the protocols around how to store and share data
- Work with the sector to accelerate the use of emerging technology
- Be transparent on progress
Over the next 12 months the group says it plans to build on the work throughout 2024 with three working groups set up to review the production of a Digital Property Information Protocol (DPIP) which would describe what a digital end-to-end process would look like; a Digital Identity rules group to establish a single source of truth for ID which can be shared across multiple touch points throughout the transaction; and a Digitisation and Interoperability group looking at how data can be stored and shared so it can be used by all those involved in processing property transactions. Part of this work will include digitising LA data which was part of the government’s modernising the home buying and selling process announcements in February.
The Local Authority Property Data Pilot is provisionally planned to take place from May 2025 onwards to digitise and open up building regulations and highways data. An interactive website is to be build as part of the work to develop the protocol which will map out ‘the roles and responsibilities of each profession and identify data requirements each sector needs at every stage’
The group says it will continue to seek the views of the sector throughout its work and will provide a report into the ‘digital health of the property sector’, and an evaluation of its work over the course of the next 12 months.
Tackling accusations the speed of change is slow, HMLR Deputy Chief Executive and Director of Customer and Strategy Mike Harlow said speed of progress must be ‘tempered’ with the right ‘guard rails’ to protect the £8tn of property registered at HMLR. On the Digital Property Market Steering Group’s podcast ‘Property with a View’ Harlow said protecting property was a vital role of organisations across the property services sector and the knock on effect is the speed of change is not where some might want it to be.
2 responses
Speed of change is not going to come with what is being proposed. Sort out the builders, sort out the management companies. Estate agents can’t sell or will have fall throughs as this information is not static – it goes out of date very quickly. Lots of government money being spent on this nonsense when it could be used to help the NHS or fix buildings. This is the wrong ROI government.
If that list above represents their order of priorities I am not sure I agree with it. I would say the order should be 3, 2, 4 and I wouldn’t even bother mentioning 5, surely it is a given. Number 1 is a red herring of large dimensions. And I agree completely with anon supra, get the management companies in order and stop them taking advantage of consumers. Make them upload all the information to a portal for all to see at all times and cut out the delays and financial penalties associated with leasehold (or indeed Commonhold) ownership.