The award for visually stunning annual report by a government department or agency once again goes to HM Land Registry.
Anyone buying or selling land or property, or taking out a mortgage, must apply to Land Registry to register unregistered land or property, new owners and interests affecting registered land or property – providing ample photos to illustrate HMLR’s annual report.
Photos in the 2022-23 report include the Royal Horseguards Hotel in central London (pictured below), which was created from the National Liberal Club and its apartments, once the home of the first chief of Britain’s secret intelligence service. Land Registry caseworkers registered the sale of the leasehold for nearly £128m in April 2022.
To illustrate caseworkers registering Wrexham AFC’s purchase of the club’s historic Racecourse Ground from Wrexham Glyndwr University for £2m last June, the Land Registry used a photo of an empty stadium.
Surely the club’s owners, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, pictured above, celebrating Wrexham’s promotion to League Two would have been a more exciting photo? After all, it’s not every day you get to feature two Hollywood stars in your annual report.
Alas for the registry, visual glories cannot detract from a key finding in the year’s work: the percentage of customers rating its services ‘good to excellent’ continues to decline: from 70% in 2020-21 and 63% in 2021-22 to just 60% in 2022-23.
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