In its latest blog, HM Land Registry (HMLR) announces that it is trialling a “quick call” service to resolve straightforward application queries.
HMLR has reported that around 3,500 daily applications contain missing, incomplete or wrongly drawn information. Usually an HMLR caseworker will assess the information and if required an information request, or requisition, will be raised. Currently requisitions can delay the completion of a simple application to update the register by two weeks.
To overcome the problem and resulting delays HMLR has announced that it will trial its new “quick call” telephone requisitions service.
Darren Standring, HMLR customer policy executive said that feedback showed customers prefer a quick phone call to resolve simple application issues, and commented that:
“We don’t currently have comprehensive information on how often they were used and how much time they saved for customers and for our caseworkers. The aim of the trial is to help us make evidence-driven decisions about the future of telephone requisitions.”
The trial will involve a caseworker calling a conveyancer and if the issue cannot be resolved over the phone, a requisition will be issued as usual.
HMLR says that the trial is being undertaken by a limited number of staff and will not cover all applications submitted, so a conveyancer may receive a call about one application but not another.
Telephone requisitions will be trialled for at least a month, says HMLR, following which a decision will be taken on how to proceed.
Standring added:
“At this stage we are not necessarily committing to the reintroduction of telephone requisitions as we want to be sure that any long-term solution provides real support for our customers as well as bringing greater efficiency – and therefore speed – to our services.”
3 responses
I would imagine that many requisitions should be capable of resolution using either a quick call or in some cases the Land Registry simply applying some common sense discretion. This had historically been their approach for many years for such matters and it had become regrettable that their approach had shifted to what on occasions seems both a bureaucratic approach to such clerical oversights raised by inaccessible LR case workers whose contact details had ceased to be provided on requisitions. The use of online filing and rise of home working often means that staff are either typing directly into Land Registry forms or submitting forms with less supervision and so some pragmatic latitude would be a welcome development.
Clients have little or no objective information as to how efficient a particular conveyancer is.
Statistics from LR about about requisitions should be published online in a client friendly format as a quid pro quo for any continuation of reserved matters
Telephone contact is scarcely a new procedure. Most trivial queries (e.g. spellings, postcodes, references, etc.) were always raised in a simple, friendly call from HMLR to the solicitor concerned- until this suddenly, for no good reason, to be replaced by more and more Requisitions with dire cancellation date warnings. Of course it’s much quicker to resolve such issues by telephone.
Meanwhile, the Title Create backlog grows daily- no sign of any improvement in processing times: applications are usually taking well over A YEAR!