Land Registry Applications Go Digital For 2022

 

From November 2022, the land registry service in the UK is set to go digital, allowing anyone wanting to buy or sell land to do it exclusively online.

This digitalisation is a long time coming, as the property industry continues to evolve with modern processes switching to an online approach. Bringing the industry up to date will not only help speed up the process of registering land but it means landowners, investors and developers won’t have to manually upload documents which takes time and can leave them open to errors.

Here, we explore why the land registry is going digital and what this will mean for the property industry moving forward.

How Do You Register Land In The UK At The Moment?

When buying or selling a house or land, the current process in the UK is still done by uploading a paper form or scanning a PDF. This means conveyancers and landowners looking to update, sell or change the title have to manually upload and wait for any errors to be flagged by the HM Land Registry.

With nearly all of us conducting our lives online and with increasing digitalisation, it can feel like an outdated and lower process. Whether it’s for business or a personal move, most of us in the UK will at some point need to change, apply or update the land registry. Improving the service will benefit a lot more people and help automate registering land.

What Is The New Digital Land Registration Service?

Having a digital registration service will help make applications faster and easier for people to submit. It will also mean fees are automatically calculated and fewer errors will happen as everything will be automated.

Once the digital land registration service launches later in 2022, conveyancers and landowners will be able to login into a portal connected to the UK Gov’s Business Gateway platform. It will also mean they can keep up to date with the application and get real-time notifications when something needs amending, updating or confirming. Currently, any changes have to be manually made by someone at the Land Registry office which adds delay to applications.

Automating a process means the industry evolves to meet a more efficient and modern way to register and change land ownership. Going digital is also a great way for the HM Land Registry to keep up with our ever-changing expectations as more of us than ever are conducting business online.

Why Going Digital Is Important For Land Registry

Digital transformation in any business is a great way to streamline slower processes and make running a business much smoother and quicker, and registering change for land is no different.

Graham Dunlop, Senior Data Product Manager at LandTech (https://land.tech), had the following to add:

“The Government's commitment to digitise the planning system is an immensely helpful step in the right direction for the industry. We've already seen many benefits from Land Registry's ongoing digital transformation resulting in new services that are more efficient and easier to integrate with. ”

“We display information from Land Registry in our site sourcing software, LandInsight, and the adoption of digital services will make processing applications much faster and allow us to show more accurate and up to date information.”

“As part of the digitisation push, we're also excited to see Land Registry's progress on the Local Land Charges initiative. This has potential to open up access to information that is currently difficult to source at a national level. For example, Tree Preservation Orders (TPOs), which can be really crucial to developers and planners trying to make decisions about new housing schemes.”

Graham Dunlop, Senior Data Product Manager, LandTech

With such a huge investment in their digital processes, this is a great step forward for HM Land Registry as it brings their essential service up to date with other parts of land conveyancing. With more of us than ever working remotely and conducting business online, having a faster land registry process meets the expectations we’ve all become used to in a world of modern technology.

As property developers and conveyancing teams have no choice but to use the HM services, going digital will be a positive move for the industry and help speed up the otherwise slower process of changing and updating land titles.

Here at Pure Structured Finance, we’re in full support of any digital transformation that helps improve our clients’ processes in the property sector and welcome the news of land registries going digital. It may take some time to get used to, but we have high hopes for this modern new system.

If you want to learn more about how our experienced team could help your next residential investment project or commercial development, why not get in touch with us today.