Land Registry: Less work for all
The number of applications containing avoidable requisitions has continued to fall and is almost half of what it was in 2022, HM Land Registry (HMLR) has revealed.
The news came as the Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) warned that continuing problems with post-completion work were “not just a process failure but an ethical one”.
Requisitions are sent when something is missing from or wrong with an application to amend the register. Common avoidable requisition points include name discrepancies, identity evidence errors, unclear plans and missing supporting documents.
New HMLR figures show that there were 439,000 avoidable requisitions in 2025, a figure that has been falling steadily since 2022, when there were 839,000.
When adjusted for application volumes, the rate still fell by 39% in that period – from 174 avoidable points per 1,000 applications to 106 – “showing that most of the improvement came from fewer avoidable points per application”, said Andrew Robertson, head of customer policy.
The improvement has continued into 2026, with the average now 94 points per 1,000 applications.
HMLR estimated that this all represented a saving of around £12m in “industry time spent resolving preventable issues”. It began a concerted campaign [1] to reduce the need for requisitions two years ago.
Mr Robertson said conveyancers and post-completion teams had “strengthened checks, reviewed their requisition data and made use of training and guidance.
“Industry bodies have helped share good practice and raise awareness. HM Land Registry has introduced more digital checks, while caseworkers and support teams have continued to improve how requisitions are raised.”
Internal checks carried out by HMLR had shown that fewer cases now involved “an unnecessary requisition or one where the recorded reason did not accurately reflect the issue”.
These issues affected 12% of checked cases in 2022/23, falling to 10% in 2024/25 and 8% in 2025/26. “This suggests that internal checks, guidance and learning are helping caseworkers raise the right requisitions more consistently.”
Stephen Ward, deputy chief executive of the CLC, commented: “It is good to see avoidable requisition rates coming down through work that is going on across the sector.
“The publication of data on avoidable requisitions is proving to be just as constructive as we had hoped, helping conveyancers to understand what is working and where further progress can be made.”
Meanwhile, the CLC warned about continuing problems with post-completion work in its Risk Agenda 2026 [2], published this week, saying they were “not just a process failure but an ethical one”.
The regulator said it now looked at requisitions on inspections into firms and had recently written to a number of CLC practices with higher-than-expected avoidable requisitions rates and asked them to provide an action plan to reduce them.
The Risk Agenda said: “Data on requisition rates now shared with the CLC, other regulators, account holders and the public provides greater transparency on performance and should be actively used by practices to benchmark and improve.”
It cautioned that the characterisation of this work as ‘post-completion’ can create a misleading impression that it is administrative or secondary. At a time of greater scrutiny on lawyers’ ethics, it said: “The CLC expects practices to treat application accuracy as a core professional responsibility.”
With a significant minority of CLC practices also handling probate and other private client matters, the annual publication also for the first time highlighted issues specific to this area of practice – specifically inheritance tax (IHT) changes and estate funding.
IHT reforms taking effect next April – that mean unused pension funds and death benefits will form part of a taxable estate for IHT purposes – are expected to increase financial pressures on estates and may lead to greater demand for short-term estate funding solutions.
Practitioners and other stakeholders have told the CLC that consumers may increasingly seek access to specialist lending, including short-term loans to pay IHT pending estate administration, and beneficiary advances providing early access to inheritance funds.
Mr Ward said: “Rewarding though the work is, the high levels of risk associated with conveyancing and private client matters should always be at the front of our minds. Practitioners understand this and we are pleased that generally we see very high standards across the board.
“But in busy practices, small issues can quickly become big ones if not tackled and the Risk Agenda forms part of our strategy to inform the profession of the regulatory hot spots.”