Working together: HM Land Registry's Annual Report 2023-24

12 Sep 2024 02:35 PM

Working together, our Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24, were published yesterday (12 September 2024).

We have published our annual report and accounts.

Our year in numbers 

• 56.6 million service requests (223,000 per working day), up from 46.5 million in 2022-23
• 4.26 million register change applications processed, of which more than 318,000 were fast-tracked (94% of these were processed within 10 working days)
• 87% digital applications to change the register (more than 3.7m applications) 
• 21.2 million guaranteed information services requests completed (99.7% within 3 days) 
• 18,000 daily requests to update the register or create a new title 
• 22 further local authorities migrated to our Local Land Charges Register 

During another busy year we received significantly more service requests than the previous year against the backdrop of an active property market. We continued to focus on speeding up processing times with some positive results, while acknowledging there is still more to do. 

Simon Hayes, Chief Executive and Chief Land Registrar: 

In the last year, we saw some very positive results in terms of our processing times, improving the average speed of service to 13 days overall, and reducing the age of our oldest applications by 3 months. 

We’ve successfully built our capacity and capability through recruitment, training and progression, enabling us to increase both overall output and productivity, and our total output over the year was up 7% on 2022-23. 

However, it’s still taking us longer to process some applications than we or our customers would expect, and I fully appreciate the impact this can have. That’s why improving our service has remained, and will continue to remain, our number one priority.

Measures to support customers 

• We recruited more than 300 caseworkers in 2023-24 to help process applications and promoted around 600 caseworkers to more senior roles, allowing them to work on more complex applications. 
• Our Local Land Charges Programme successfully migrated another 22 local authorities to our Local Land Charges Register. This allows customers to get immediate, high-quality, standardised official search results for a fixed fee, saving time and money. Since work began on the Local Land Charges Register in 2018, we have saved customers more than £1.9 million due to cheaper search fees and more than 6000 years of time waiting for search results. 
• We provided a range of customer training to reduce the number of avoidable requisitions (requests for information) that lead to delays in processing applications. 
• In response to customer feedback, we introduced a function for portal users to access, complete and submit their colleagues’ applications as well as to transfer applications between colleagues. 
• We attracted almost 7,000 subscribers to our dedicated customer newsletter, Practice and Process, focusing on updates to our practice guides, changes to our processes and customer training.

Working together across the property sector 

• We were instrumental in bringing experts together to form the new Digital Property Market Steering Group (DPMSG). The group’s purpose is to accelerate the adoption of digital technology and collaborate for a more transparent, secure and consumer-friendly property market. We organised the Digital Property Market conference in September 2023, with more than 270 sector and government guests feeding back on how the process for buying and selling property could be improved. 
• We have continued to promote the use of our data by PropTech (property technology) companies who are vital to creating improvements in the property market. By co-sponsoring the Geovation Accelerator Programme since 2017, we have helped to kickstart the business of 43 PropTech start-ups who have collectively raised more than £78 million in investment and created hundreds of jobs. 

Moving forward, we will continue to improve how we work with our customers, invest in the training and development of our people and work with our partners across the property market. All of which will help us to deliver a faster, more efficient service – our number one priority.