Land Registry sheds jobs and shuts offices

The Land Registry has confirmed that it will be making redundancies and shutting offices. It will also sell its head office in central London and move to Croydon in a bid to cut £500m in costs over the next ten years.

However, after a large number of voluntary redundancies – 1,800 within the last year – plus objections from the unions, there will be one-third fewer compulsory redundancies than had first been mooted. More voluntary redundancies will be sought. The Land Registry announced its cost-cutting programme after being caught by the massive slide in house sales.

The offices to close are Portsmouth, which employs 200, Stevenage (nearly 300) and Tunbridge Wells (200). In Plymouth and Peterborough, staff will move to other offices, and in Portsmouth there will be a much-reduced presence for the next three years. Under earlier plans, the Harrow office closed last month and the York office shuts in September.

As a result of the office closures and voluntary redundancies, staff numbers will reduce to just over 5,000 by the end of 2011 and to around 4,200 by the end of 2014. The number of clerical staff will be reduced by 150 compulsory redundancies, rather than the 400 originally proposed.

Marco Pierleoni, chief Land Registrar and chief executive, said: “The aim is to bring certainty and financial stability as quickly as possible and to secure the future of Land Registry in these very difficult times.”

The Land Registry abandoned its e-conveyancing chain matrix project in 2008 after allegedly spending millions of pounds on it. But Pierleoni said that more of the Land Registry’s work would be delivered online.