HM Land Registry (HMLR) is among the 125 government departments that have this week voted for strike action amidst ongoing disputes over pay, pensions, jobs, and redundancy terms.
Coordinated by the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), those departments whose ballots surpassed 50% in favour of strike action are set to stage walkouts unless ministers meet their demands before the end of next week.
Amongst the 125 departments that voted to strike – nearly half of those balloted – is the Land Registry. On what this may mean for residential property transactions, HM Land Registry said:
“The PCS National Executive Committee will take a decision on 18th November regarding whether it will call for strike action. In the meantime, HM Land Registry is reviewing the controls it has in place to mitigate and reduce the impacts of all identified risks potentially arising from a single day or sustained action. Currently, we anticipate minimal disruption to our services by planning for different scenarios.”
Strikes are set to begin in December and could last until the middle of next year, with Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS, warning of a “prolonged programme of industrial action into every corner of public life” should strikes take place.
The current proposal of an average pay rise of 2% is some 8% shy of the 10% pay rise wanted by Serwotka, who said the civil service is the “forgotten part of the public sector”.
Alongside wanting the strikes to have “maximum effect”, the PCS general secretary said the public should be onboard:
“The public themselves are going through a massive cost of living squeeze, worried about paying their mortgages and paying their rents and are therefore instinctively sympathetic to people who are clearly getting a raw deal.
It’s clear that if you don’t have 100,000 workers on strike on one day, but you have a million, it makes a different political pressure on the government that is harder for them to ignore.”
A government spokesperson told The Times:
“The public sector pay awards are a careful balance between delivering value for money for the taxpayer and recognising the importance of public sector workers.
As the public would expect, we have plans in place to keep essential services running and minimise any potential disruption if strikes do go ahead.”
6 responses
With the negativity surrounding the recent telegraph article: Mortgage deals collapse as civil servants allowed 60 days off a year, this is really not going to help either in a practical way or as far as positive PR for HMLR is concerned.
I have always felt that the worst mistake ever made by HMLR was in 1975 when it failed to secure funding to carry forward the brilliant computerisation of National Land Charges to other projects. Does anyone else still shudder at the word “Kidbrooke”?
HMLR is now, again firmly placed as an innovator providing much needed renewal to the home moving sector. Political maneuvering over industrial action must not squander this.
I have had many clients whose matters have not been registered, but who now wish to sell or re-mortgage or extend their lease. ‘Sympathetic’ to the LR backlog is not how I would describe them!
Anon
All conveyancers should be professionally obliged to ensure that all properties are bought fit for further transactions on completion. This should be the quid pro quo of reserved matters
I wonder how the pay and working conditions of those who have a few LR cases to deal with compares to those that have to deal with all of them.
I’m staggered – The sheer backlog at land registry is disgraceful, some transactions are taking over 2 years to register and whilst they blame Covid I actually blame the staff. They were working from home with the phone lines shut down and still didn’t keep on top of it. The conveyancers who fed the land registry worked additional hours for no extra pay (private sector is a disgrace) and many are now facing redundancy because the market has tanked.
I think this just shows it up for what it is, entitled people that do not think they actually have to work for their money.
Unfortunately the back logs are going to get to 4 years now because the land registry staff do not think that they have to work through the back log they created.