Land Registry: Publication supported by trade bodies and industry
HM Land Registry (HMLR) is to publish data this autumn showing the number of avoidable requisitions it has to raise with every conveyancing firm.
It is information that both regulators and the public are likely to take an interest in, albeit for different reasons.
HMLR said a “significant proportion” of the 800,000 requisitions it sends out every year could be “readily avoided” – up to a quarter of the requisitions generated by some conveyancers fell into this category.
The aim was for registrations of land to be processed first time, it said, without the need for clarification or further information to support the application (a requisition).
Figures last autumn showed that 22% of the more than 4.4m applications received in the previous year (947,000) required a requisition, each containing an average of two points, but many with more.
As well as adding on average 15 working days to the time it took for a transaction to be registered, HMLR estimated that requisitions could be costing lawyers as much as £19m, with £3.6m attributable just to getting names wrong.
It is now sending customers data “on the percentage of their applications where these requisitions could be avoided before the application is submitted”.
This would be published in the autumn, bringing “greater clarity to the data on overall requisition rates which is already published”.
Investment in staff, technology, and training for customers had seen avoidable requisitions decline, but they were still “making things harder for law firms than they need be”.
HMLR said that among the reasons for avoidable requisitions were name discrepancies, missing documents and witness details.
It published a table of the most common avoidable requisitions last year, headed by variations in names and missing information. They were followed by problems with plans and descriptions and with identity.
HMLR said publication of avoidable requisition rates was “supported by trade bodies and industry and aligns with the government’s priorities for HM Land Registry”.
Requisition figures have previously been mooted as one of the quality measures that could be used by consumers when choosing a lawyer.
Sheila Kumar, chief executive of the Council for Licensed Conveyancers, commented: “Good-quality title applications are the culmination of the conveyancing process and are the final, vital step to ensure that the interests of buyers and lenders are protected, so this is an area of focus for the CLC.
“Many conveyancing practices are doing a great job and we have seen others make recent progress too, so we know there is scope for practices that are not performing as well to improve.
“We are already using data from HM Land Registry as part of our risk profiling of individual practices and we expect conveyancers to make use of this data and the training available from HM Land Registry to improve their services.”
Paul Philip, chief executive of the Solicitors Regulation Authority, added: “The public need easy-to-access relevant information to help them shop around for legal services.
“The more useful and accurate information that is available, across a range of potential indicators on quality or cost, the better for consumers to be able to choose the right service for them.”
HMLR said it recently introduced a link to the ‘reply to requisition’ function, to provide an easier way for conveyancers to check outstanding requisitions.
Conveyancers were recently enabled to see their own and their colleagues’ responses to requisitions, “improving their ability to manage their applications more easily”.
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