Land Registry: Requisitions on 22% of applications
Conveyancers’ failures to get names right in applications to HM Land Registry (HMLR) is costing them up to £3.6m a year in fee-earner time to correct, the agency has estimated.
In all, requisitions sent by HMLR – when something is missing from or wrong with an application to amend the register – could be costing lawyers as much as £19m.
HMLR has produced the figures as part of an effort to reduce the number of requisitions, while acknowledging its own role too – there are “issues” with around 10% of requisitions it sends.
According to Ilia Bowles, head of directorate planning at HMLR Service Delivery, 22% of the more than 4.4 million applications received in the last year (947,000) required a requisition, each containing an average of two points, but many with more.
She wrote: “Surely a couple of typos and a missing date in a transfer, or a black-and-white plan that’s not signed, cannot cause too many problems. The simple fact is, they do. And the main problem is: requisitions lead to delays.”
HMLR estimates they add on average 15 working days to the time it takes for the transaction to be registered.
She said the agency had to work on the basis that “it’s better to be safe than sorry, not only to compile a complete and correct register, but also to ensure our data is in optimal condition, prevent issues arising in transactions that have yet to take place and to safeguard against fraud”.
HMLR has gathered how many requisitions it sends in relation to the 10 most common requisitions that it deems “avoidable”, in that they are mainly administrative errors and omissions. These add up to more than 600,000 points alone.
Variations in names was top in the year to 30 September (114,000 requisitions), followed by missing information (110,000), plans and descriptions (81,000), identity (81,000) and missing evidence (80,000).
Its economists then examined how much it cost conveyancers to rectify such a mistake in a simple application to update the register, such as a straightforward transfer or remortgage.
Ms Bowles said: “Based on average pay levels in the sector, they calculated a sum of between £5 for each ‘avoidable’ clerical error and £30 for issues that involve chasing third parties for a document or consent, for example.
“Multiplied across all firms, these ‘minor mistakes’ become hugely expensive, costing the industry anything between £3.2m and £19.1m every year.”
On this basis, variations in names could cost anywhere between £600,000 and £3.6m.
Ms Bowles said HMLR was also looking at what it could do to reduce the number of requisitions it sent, along with greater consistency in raising them, after an audit found an issue with approximately one in ten requisitions.
To deal with this, it plans to “increase caseworker capability” to avoid unnecessary requisitions, develop systems and policies “to help ‘design out’ simple errors and eliminate waste”, and assist customers to submit complete and correct applications that are right first time.
“It is crucial we do this,” Ms Bowles said. “No matter the whos, whys and wherefores, requisitions take up your time and ours, clog up our respective systems and lead to delays in processing applications. Ultimately, they negatively affect our service to you and your service to your clients.”
With more than 90% of registration applications now lodged digitally, HMLR was working on providing more data validation, she said, such as “replacing lengthy manual post-submission checks with a system that instantly compares application details against the register before submission”.
There was also a range of support to assist conveyancers in making complete and correct applications, gathered in HMLR’s Training hub, and it would also be running more live online workshops.
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