Search agents call on Government to halt the Land Registry Land Charges project

IPSA – the Association of Independent Personal Search Agents – says the migration of land charges to a new digital system being set up by HM Land Registry has led to thousands of mistakes in the data being stored and helped create new delays in conducting property searches.

Now IPSA members from across the country have agreed to call on the HMLR to suspend the project five years after it was first launched.

In that time land charges information from 77 local authorities has been transferred to the central digital database in a move which was meant to speed up and simplify property searches.

But IPSA chairman Andrew Prismall says the hoped-for improvements from HMLR digitisation following IPSA’s input and advice have failed to materialise, with many search agents reporting slower response times and inaccurate results.

He said: “It is now five years since the first local authority migrated its land charges data to the HMLR digital register and a celebratory newsletter to highlight the milestone is about to be released. However, with only 77 local authorities live to date – less than a quarter of the total – it doesn’t feel as though there is much to celebrate at all.

“With each new migration it is becoming more and more apparent that there are thousands of discrepancies, errors, omissions and inconsistencies.  In many areas, the information has to be treated as “unrefined data” and takes so much time and effort to be deemed acceptable for use in professional search reports.

“It is clear that the current system is not producing the results anyone wants, so we are asking the Government to halt the process whilst improvements are made.”

A survey of IPSA members showed that most of those taking part were not happy with the results of the new HMLR digital search system. More than half (58 per cent) said they were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the accuracy of the new tool, and 66 per cent were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the consistency of the results they got from it.

Fifty-eight per cent said it now took them longer to complete a land charges search on a property in an area covered by the new system, with 83 per cent saying the most common problem encountered was “Entries relating to neighbouring properties”.

Heather Poole-Gleed, who owns a search agency in Shropshire and is director of membership services at IPSA, said: “We had high hopes that the digitisation of Land Charges records by HMLR would go a long way towards helping clear the backlog of conveyancing cases, but so far that hasn’t happened.

“I have every faith that HMLR will sort out the issues, but we could do with that happening sooner rather than later. It’s come to the point where we need the issues sorting now. When we asked members if they thought the new register was “reliable in all migrated areas”, the response was one hundred per cent ‘no’ which is worrying, to say the least.

“In the meantime, independent search agents will continue to provide the fastest, most accurate option for conveyancers.”

For more information about IPSA or to find an independent agent, visit www.ipsa-online.org.uk/