Local Land Charges officers slam proposed Land Registry takeover

The proposed takeover of the Local Land Charges function by the Land Registry “would lead to a more fragmented, more costly and less reliable service than that which already exists”, the Local Land Charges Institute (LLCI) has warned.

In a letter to Michael Fallon, Minister for Business and Enterprise, the Institute also claimed that the move, if it went ahead, would result in a poorer service for the property-buying public and the businesses that assist them.

The LLCI, which represents Local Land Charges officers across England and Wales and has more than 300 local authorities as members, called on Fallon to reject the proposal.

The Institute’s letter was prompted by the Land Registry’s launch of a consultation on widening its role to provide LLC searches.

The Land Registry suggested that a prototype run between May and November 2013 and involving seven local authorities had been a success.

Under its proposed model, the Land Registry would become sole registering authority for LLCs and be a provider of LLC search results.

The consultation also considers the consequential relationship between local authorities as originating authorities and the Land Registry as the registering authority.

Announcing the consultation, Ed Lester, chief executive of the Land Registry, claimed that there were huge variations in how LLC information was held across local authorities and that this led to variations in cost, quality and speed.

He also said providing easy and transparent access to land and property information would also support the Government’s ‘digital by default’ agenda for public services.

Although the LLCI will be responding separately to the Land Registry Consultation, it said in the letter to Michael Fallon that the proposed takeover should be rejected for the following reasons:

  1. The perceived problems with the Local Land Charges function had been overstated;
  2. Such problems as there might be could be resolved more simply and with less financial outlay than by the takeover;
  3. The suggested demand for the takeover had been overstated;
  4. The Land Registry had failed to demonstrate a clear understanding of the processes and risks involved in the Local Land Charges function;
  5. The Land Registry was proposing a worse level of service than currently exists;
  6. The Land Registry had failed to demonstrate how it would actually provide the service; and
  7. The Land Registry, “having proposed a number of unsatisfactory business models over the course of almost three years”, was proposing only to take over half the service, providing less information to customers than local authorities currently do, leaving local authorities to undertake the more complex work and providing a fragmented service to customers.

The LLCI said that it raised concerns when the Land Registry first announced its proposals three years ago and that very few of these concerns had been resolved.

The Institute said that it had been involved with the Land Registry about the plans since 2011 and had had representatives on the prototype project board as well as the Land Registry’s local government focus group.

“Whilst not supporting the Land Registry’s proposals, LLCI members have always been willing to share their expertise with Land Registry and ensure that, should Land Registry decide to proceed, it does so with as full an understanding as possible of the complex nature of what it is proposing and the limitations of its approach,” it added.

The Institute told Fallon: “You must decide whether you want to discard current publicly-funded IT systems which in the vast majority of cases perform perfectly satisfactorily and commit tens of millions of pounds of public money to a major IT project whose success would be far from assured, the need for which is unproven, and through which Land Registry intends providing less information to its customers than local authorities currently do.

“You must decide who is best placed to hold, maintain and issue official searches of the Register(s) of Local Land Charges and answer the associated Enquiries of Local Authority(ies), and to answer follow up enquiries and resolve technical problems relating to both concerning data the vast majority of which originates from and will continue to be held by local authorities.”

The letter, signed by the chair and vice-chair of the LLCI, added: “Land Registry has failed to demonstrate unequivocally its understanding of the service provided and the vital part this plays in the housing market and wider economy. This proposal does not demonstrate an improvement or enhancement to the service. “