The Land Registry’s deputy chief executive, Mike Harlow, says that his organisation is not pointing the finger of blame at conveyancers, despite a recent blog stating that basic conveyancing errors on documents are to blame for a number of delays in property transactions? Watch the video below. 

Conveyancers were urged last month to conduct better “quality control” on documents filed to the Land Registry after the body identified ‘basic errors’ as a primary reason why applications are being delayed.

The Land Registry’s deputy chief executive, Mike Harlow, said that around one in five applications to the body have an avoidable mistake or missing information, resulting in property transaction delays.

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 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 went on to insist that 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”.

Two experienced property industry professionals, Stuart Forsdike and Lorraine Richardson, recently discussed the blog in their regular You Tube chat, Conveyancing Matters. They wondered whether the backlash to the blog from the conveyancing community and land registration delays meant that the Land Registry had lost its way.

The pair were therefore pleased that Harlow was willing to come on to Conveyancing Matters to chat about his blog and a wide range of other issues.

He made it clear that his comments were not intended to point the finger of blame at conveyancers and he apologised if that is the impression he gave. But the chat was not just about the controversial issues; the trio talked about Land Registry innovation, support for conveyancing firms, fraud and a host of other topics.