HM Land Registry (HMLR) has published its Annual Report for 2021-22, revealing progress in making the transition to becoming a data-driven, digital organisation that is “on track to meet the challenges of a volatile market”.
The report, titled “Accelerating our digital transformation”, begins by listing some key figures relevant to HMLR’s operations during the 2021-22 period:
- 4 million service requests
- £318.9 million in total revenue
- 225,000 digital land registration applications through the HMLR portal
- 7 million digital applications
- 300,000 Local Land Charges searches
- 20% increase in demand for HMLR’s services (from the previous year)
- 100,000 daily searches for land and property data
- 63% customer satisfaction rate
Michael Mire, Chair of the HMLR Board since 2016, reiterated the desire for HMLR to “become the place to go for all data about property with a register that is not only digital but 3D as well, has almost real-time information on property values”, as well as becoming “the fastest anywhere at enabling and recording changes in ownership”.
Simon Hayes, Chief Executive and Chief Land Registrar at HMLR, was similarly buoyant. He said:
“It has been a strong year for HM Land Registry. We have seen a 20% increase in demand for our services compared to the previous year, but still met our key performance indicators for customer satisfaction, colleague engagement and protecting the integrity of our registers.
While we aren’t quite where we want to be on other key performance indicators, particularly overall speed of service, our deliverables this year have put us well on course to be able to address these issues sustainably moving forward.”
Providing an example of HMLR’s digitisation, Hayes said:
“Of the [156,000 service requests] we receive each day, 130,000 are what we call information services requests – such as an official search, where customers need to see what data is currently held on the register. Over 90% of these requests are automated and available instantly. The remainder require some manual intervention, and we deliver 95% of these within our three-day service standard.”
On HMLR’s key objective of enabling property to be bought and sold digitally, Mike Harlow, General Counsel, Deputy Chief Executive and Deputy Land Registrar said:
“We are leading discussions to build a collective vision of a digitally connected sector where estate agents, lenders, lawyers, surveyors, developers, brokers and their various clients are all interacting digitally – sharing the same information about the properties and the transactions.
This promises a much-improved experience for the ultimate consumers – the people and businesses who want to move in or out.
In partnership with all the key organisation, we are exploring options for a potential series of events to bring key players from across the market together to explore and capitalise on the opportunities that will emerge from a shared vision of how the property market can become much more efficient and better informed.”
Harlow went on to say that in order to unlock a “truly digital and automated form of land registration”, HMLR needs more assurance from conveyancers as to what they know about the transaction:
“We cannot fully unlock automation, though, without full trust in the information provided to us. We spend time checking applications that come from conveyancers at the moment and that can create a bit of unnecessary to-and-fro. To automate our services we need legal professionals to give us reliable assurance as to what they know about the transaction.
As more applications are received digitally, this assurance becomes the final key in unlocking a truly digital and automated form of land registration – changing the way we deal with our customers and how we interact with them in the future.”
Read the full report here.
