Council chief execs warn over Land Registry plans for local land charges

The proposed takeover of the Local Land Charges function by the Land Registry presents “substantial risks” to the quality, efficency and cost of the service, SOLACE has warned.

In a letter to Ed Lester, Chief Land Registrar and Chief Executive of the Land Registry, SOLACE Director Graeme McDonald wrote: “The service that councils currently provide is normally of a high quality with the vast majority of searches process within 10 days. Indeed, the Land Registry [has] undertaken its own research in recent years (Synovate UK, 2011 & Ipsos Mori 2013) which found improvements in the search process, limited need for significant change and a concern that change would lead to a loss of important local expertise.

“While improvements in a minority of locations can be made, the centralisation of land charges would place an over-reliance on a single, fragile system with considerable associated costs. It also seems unlikely that a more distant, centralised approach would spur innovation or ensure a more responsive service.”

McDonald also claimed that the Land Registry proposal would require significant Government investment “with an, at best, unclear return on that investment”.

He added that councils had already invested in local responsive systems and processes that ensured land searches were appropriately delivered across the country.

“These systems would be discarded and replaced by a centralised IT approach, which have poor records of success, and a multitude of individual service level agreements and data transfer arrangements between providers of information,” SOLACE’s Director said.

McDonald also argued that the current “direction of travel” of Government reform was to place services as close to the customer as possible.

“In this way the state is able to provide more transparent, responsive and cost-effective services,” he said. “This proposal is completely contrary to this policy approach. Moreover, at a time when local government, and public services more generally, is working within such tight fiscal restraints, such proposals only go to distract from the important task of delivering important services.”

McDonald called on the Land Registry to reconsider its centralising proposals and to work with local government “to further improve the devolved system that the sector has already invested in”.

The Land Registry proposals have already been met with strong criticism from the Local Land Charges Institute, which said they would “lead to a more fragmented, more costly and less reliable service than that which already exists”.

The Association of Independent Personal Search Agents meanwhile threatened the Land Registry with judicial review proceeding over the consultation to widen its powers.

IPSA criticised the length of time for the consultation (seven weeks) and the legal uncertainty over the issue of the legality of charging all and any fees for property search related environmental information.