HM Land Registry faces a “pivotal” year, according to chair of the organisation’s board, Neil Sachdev (pictured). The comments came in a response to a letter from parliamentary under-secretary of state Baroness Taylor of Stevenage outlining expectations for the agency.
In her letter, Baroness Taylor said HMLR should reposition its service offering from that of a “data repository” to an organisation that “uses its data and expertise to unlock value for customers, the public sector and the wider economy”, adding more value when it comes to government priorities including home building and tenure reform. A review of fee structures and charges was also encouraged to align with the “government’s plans to reduce the cost of living and the cost of home buying and selling”.
In response, Sachdev said HMLR faceds a “pivotal” year following the departure of chief executive Simon Hayes in September 2025 and the retirement of deputy chief executive and director of customer and strategy Mike Harlow. Work to recruit a permanent chief executive and chief land registrar, and “ensure that strong succession planning is in place across both the board and executive team”, is ongoing.
Sachdev reaffirmed a commitment to deliver on Strategy 2025+ and the Business Plan 2026+, saying it is imperative the organisation remains focused on “restoring consistent service performance while continuing the modernisation of our services, systems and data”.
“Recent progress demonstrates that sustainable improvement can be achieved, and the priority now is to embed that progress and ensure we are responsive to any changes in future market conditions,” he added.
Acknowledging HMLR continues to tackle registration delays Sachdev said further reducing the age of outstanding applications is a “key priority… ensuring that processing times do not cause real-world problems for customers”.
Over the past 12 months, HMLR has published data on requisition rates and introduced checks to tackle simple administrative errors through its Business Gateway. Further investment will expand the use of automation and new technologies for high volume, lower complexity transactions, particularly residential mortgages, said Sachdev.
“Digital validation and quality assurance are also being improved to reduce avoidable errors and rework earlier in the application process, ensuring expert colleagues are increasingly focused on complex and judgement-based applications where human expertise adds the greatest value,” he explained. “Together, these interventions are explicitly focused on improving service reliability and the overall customer experience, drawing on wider government expertise where appropriate.”
On fees, Sachdev said HMLR is working to “design a simpler fees and charging model”.
HMLR will “continue to support reform to the home buying and selling process, through improvements to the system of property transactions to make them easier, faster and less stressful for customers and we will input into the development of the home buying and selling roadmap,” Sachdev concluded. “HMLR will build on the digitalisation capability developed during the Local Land Charges programme, which is progressing towards full national completion by 2028/29, to support opening up more locally held property data.”
Image courtesy of gov.uk and reproduced under Open Government Licence v3.0
