Land Registry: Conveyancers are making 'basic errors'...

Conveyancers are being urged to conduct better “quality control” on documents filed to the Land Registry after the body revealed ‘basic errors’ are stopping applications from proceeding.

The Land Registry’s deputy chief executive Mike Harlow has revealed that around one in five applications to the body have an avoidable mistake or missing information.

This then means the Land Registry has to send a request for information or ‘requisition,” which can delay a property transaction.

Harlow wrote in a blog post: “Including complex issues, we send around 1m requisitions a year and, in 2022, over half of these 579,000 involved one or more issues that could have been avoided – more than 845,000 points between them.

“We spend a lot of time checking for – and clarifying – basic administrative errors, from names spelled differently between the documents and the register, to undated deeds, missing pages, incomplete addresses or handwritten dates and so on that are impossible to read. We know how frustrating this can be for applicants.”

He said basic errors or omissions in applications create a bottleneck in the system and a drain on time and resources.

Harlow added: “Sometimes we do get things wrong. We know we can send unnecessary or incorrect requisitions, but this really is a minority of cases.

“A recent audit of our accuracy, which has been quality checked and assured, found that 97% of the time we raise requisitions correctly.

"We know from our published data on requisitions that some firms do a much better job in submitting clean and complete applications.

“Firms doing very similar work can have vastly different requisition rates. That must make post-completion work easier for those who ensure the application is high quality. Their investment also pays dividends in the speed and efficiency of land registration generally. I would like to thank them for their efforts.”

He said conveyancers should make sure applications are “free of avoidable errors when they are lodged,” adding: “This simple quality control makes life easier and faster for all of us. It averts potential headaches such as cancellation of the application and the risk of errors in the register.

“We are already seeing that many conveyancing firms have taken steps to reduce errors in their applications and we are looking at how we can recognise and thank these firms for their efforts.”