The Land Registry has shelved plans to introduce electronic transfers with e-signatures, and written off nearly £11m spent developing the scheme.

The Registry’s annual report, published last week, showed that it is writing off £6.4m spent developing electronic charges, signatures and transfers, and a further £4.5m spent on software to support its planned e-services.

In response to the move, the Law Society’s Property Section chair Peter Rodd said Chancery Lane may revive its plan to introduce an electronic ‘dealing room’, available to members of its Conveyancing Quality Scheme (CQS), and consider working with the Land Registry to help develop electronic working.

The Land Registry consulted stakeholders last year on the introduction of e-transfers, which would have made it possible to conduct most of the conveyancing process electronically.

But in a paper published with its annual report, the Registry said many respondents to its consultation on the project were ‘uneasy’ about proceeding with e-transfer at this time.

Their reasons included: the slow market; high levels of fraud and the risk that this problem could be exacerbated; and problems encountered using other electronic Land Registry processes, particularly e-signatures.

The Registry said it had decided to put the development of an e-transfer system ‘on hold’ for the ‘immediate future’, while maintaining it was not abandoning its work on electronic conveyancing and would re-examine the proposals over the next few years.

Chief land registrar Malcolm Dawson said the Registry would instead concentrate on fully automating its delivery systems, so customers can send documents electronically that have been prepared in the traditional way.

Rodd said the introduction of e-transfer is inevitable, and the Land Registry’s decision to halt its work presented an opportunity for the Law Society to work with the Registry to take the project forward, centred on the CQS.

Rodd said CQS firms would establish a ‘trusted community’ of conveyancers who could participate in a ‘dealing room’.

This would enable documents associated with the conveyancing transaction to be created and stored electronically, and allow relevant parties to have appropriate access to them, cutting out paper for the greater part of the process and increasing transparency.