The Times quotes William Marriott and Lauren Fraser on the impact of Land Registry delays on property transactions

According to a feature by The Times, title deeds for new build properties are regularly 18 months to two years out of date, and simple changes are reportedly taking up to nine months to process.

The Times claims that, understaffed and underfunded, the Land Registry is more than doubling its fees to access title deed information for the first time in ten years to help fund urgently needed modernisation of the service.

Data from the Land Registry confirms that more than half of applications for simple updates, including changing a name or transferring a property title, take five weeks to complete, with most simple updates completed in about four months. Some applications, however, can take as long as nine months.

William Marriott, Partner in our Private Property team, and Lauren Fraser, Senior Associate in our Real Estate Disputes team, both give their views in the article. 

William explains that delays of years are “no surprise at all” and says that the Land Registry is prioritising easy applications over more complicated ones. The Times goes on to say that certain data supports this theory: simple searches for information are taking less than a day and just over 30 per cent of updates, including removing a mortgage or registering a standard title restriction, are automated and completed within minutes.

William continues: 

But anything more complex than that, particularly transfers of parts of a registration [dividing a title between several owners], first registration of land [for new-builds], lease extensions, anything they need someone qualified to look at, causes a delay.

Lauren goes on to explain the impact this is having on legal fees. She adds: 

All this is adding to the cost of legal fees for buyers and sellers as solicitors have to serve notices on everyone just to go through the normal processes of owning a property and avoid leaving a black hole of negligence [...] The [conveyancing] industry does not want to kick the Land Registry. We are hugely supportive of what we can do to help. I suspect they are pulling their hair out over there.

Read the full article in The Times here (subscription required).