Conveyancers submitting HM Land Registry applications containing minor errors and omissions will have to correct them before they are accepted in a move the organisation estimates will save practitioners 300,000 hours a year.

Land Registry says its ‘enhanced’ digital registration service, which commences in October, will cut delays by saving time that would have been spent on unnecessary administrative tasks and speed up service by allowing caseworkers to focus on more complex work.

Conveyancers submitting applications through the Digital Registration Service on Land Registry’s portal or through third-party software providers will be unable to submit applications if they contain ‘simple’ errors. These errors will be highlighted for correction.

The service will check for errors and omissions in relation to, for instance, the borrower name: for a charge, the borrower name must be present and if the borrower is a registered proprietor, the names must match those in the register. Applications must specify if the customer is a conveyancer or non-conveyancer. A Land Registry identity form must be provided for each unrepresented party when required.

Land Registry

Land Registry: ‘enhanced’ digital registration service will cut delays

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Land Registry says many of these checks are already being performed in the Digital Registration Service on its portal and will soon be available for all Business Gateway-enabled software. 

The organisation estimates that, by 2028, the enhanced service will save conveyancers 300,000 hours a year waiting for ‘an unnecessary, manual, administrative process, and end annoying requisitions that can be resolved much earlier’. 

Mark Gray, chief transformation and technology officer at Land Registry, said: ‘This is another key milestone in improving our customer service and our processing times. By preventing errors upfront, automating routine tasks and removing unnecessary correspondence, we will save time for our customers and our caseworkers alike. And this is just the next step in modernising and automating more of our work, there is much more to come.’