Today, 29 November 2017, we published our Business Strategy which covers the direction we will take over the next 5 years to become the world’s leading land registry for speed, simplicity and an open approach to data.
We safeguard land and property ownership worth in excess of £4 trillion, including around £1 trillion of mortgages. The Land Register contains more than 25 million titles, showing evidence of ownership for some 84% of the land mass of England and Wales.
Launching the strategy at our third annual stakeholder event, Lord Henley, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said:
HM Land Registry’s new Business Strategy sets out the programme of work towards innovation and transformation. As a critical component of the UK’s national infrastructure, HM Land Registry’s work to make conveyancing simpler, faster and cheaper fits in with the government’s Industrial Strategy and looks forward to a digital future. This strategy is something I am pleased to put my name to.
Introducing the Business Strategy, Chief Executive and Chief Land Registrar Graham Farrant said:
We have a great heritage and history. Our new 5-year strategy comes as we mark our 155th anniversary and the registration of our 25 millionth title. It sets out how we will achieve our ambition to become the world’s leading land registry for speed, simplicity and an open approach to data and to achieve comprehensive registration by 2030.
1. Brilliant at the basics
We will make registration simpler and faster by becoming even more customer focused and efficient while upholding our values at all times. We will look at how we can better support conveyancers through customer training and education programmes to remove duplication of effort and simplify the registration process. We aim to digitise and automate 95% of our daily transactions by 2022 to help simplify, speed up and improve the efficiency of registration.
2. A comprehensive register
We will create a more definitive record of property ownership in England and Wales to help us make buying and selling houses simpler, faster and cheaper. A comprehensive land register with high quality and comprehensive data promises to be a significant tool to support economic and housing growth, innovation and the overall property market.
3. Digital Street
Our ground-breaking research and development project exploring how land registration might work in 2030. We are creating a pilot digital register for a small selection of properties by the end of 2017. This pilot register will be fully machine-readable and able to be updated instantly. Digital Street will contribute towards a property industry where people will buy, rent, sell, finance, build and manage property with ease.
4. Opening our data
We will publish a wide variety of data in high quality and accessible formats to maximise its use for the benefit of wider society and to drive innovation in the digital economy. The release of data we hold on 25 million land and property registered titles will support the government’s transparency agenda.
5. Expert people
In order to modernise and reshape the organisation, we need to empower our people and develop their skills. We will continue to develop the skills of our caseworkers to enable them to become the most digitally skilled land registration experts, blending their registration expertise with digital systems. We will invest in developing leadership and management skills, giving our people an opportunity to work towards professional standards, aligned to both government and external benchmarks.
6. Financially strong
We will have a robust financial plan to make sure our aims are affordable, deliver value for money and can respond to fluctuations in the market.
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