Conveyancing

HM Land Registry: giving you quick, accurate, consistent support

Chris Pope describes how HM Land Registry is being modernised and reshaped to provide the level of service expected by its professional customers.

About the author: Chris Pope joined HM Land Registry as Chief Operations O›cer in October 2017. He is responsible for all registration services, completing the register, customer services and client account management.

We hear you when you say you want quick, accurate and consistent support from us, so we are modernising and reshaping HM Land Registry (HMLR) to ensure that we can provide the level of service you expect and deserve.

We want to become easier to do business with, and are undertaking a range of activities to make this happen. This article will set out, in detail, how we are approaching improvements to our call handling. We are also working on simplifying certain aspects of conveyancing.

Registrations

You have been telling us you need quick, consistent support and that you need us to complete registrations quickly and accurately. Part of our work towards this over the last year has involved setting up our Customer Support Centre (CSC), which handles most of your contact with HMLR.

Our people within the CSC ensure that you get a more consistent answer from us. They are fully casework-trained and have access to the same systems and information as our caseworkers. In most cases, they will be able to deal with the queries you have. If they cannot, they will arrange for you to speak to the right person.

You asked us to process registration applications quicker and our CSC helps here too. The people who handle your calls allow our caseworkers to focus on applying their skills, expertise and judgement on processing the applications you send us, without being distracted by direct calls.

Call handling

We know that our call-handling times are often longer than they should be, so we are investing in our people and technology to address this. Through our ongoing investment in our people, we will be able to answer your calls quicker, handle them more consistently, increase the opportunity to deal with your query straight away and reduce rework and unnecessary calls.

You can expect improvements over the coming months, and we plan to have everything in place for you by the end of autumn 2019.

How you can help us

We know that there is more we need to do, but there are things that you can do to help us, such as using our online channels to exchange information. When you do this, you will help to reduce the number of calls we receive, so you will be able to speak with us quicker when you really need to.

Through our online channels, you will be able to get new information about your application to the caseworker who is processing it through the portal's Reply to Requisition function. You will also be able to use our online Application Enquiry service to check the progress of your application instead of calling us and join one of our four webinar topics, which will help with things like lodging quality applications.

Having a central CSC also provides us with the data we need to plan for the changes we expect in the future. This data will help us work with our technology partners to improve our support to suit your needs and give you a fully joinedup, prompt, and professional experience when handling your enquiries.

Working together to drive out inefficiencies

Alongside this work, we want to find solutions to the challenges facing both HMLR and conveyancers more broadly. This will help to make conveyancing simpler for all of us by driving inefficiencies out of conveyancing and registration processes.

One of the ways we can do this is to work with you to reduce the number of application enquiries (requisitions) we send you. The top two reasons we send application enquiries are for issues relating to discharging charges (such as a mortgage) and for issues relating to restrictions in the register. We recognise that, in some cases, it can be hard for you to get the evidence we need for these applications because you need to get it from a third party.

Would the process be more efficient if we gave you more time to get this evidence? We are about to start trials to find out, in response to your feedback.

We are also continuing to improve the consistency of the application enquiries we send you. During the summer, our caseworkers attended sessions on when and how to raise application enquiries, and we are continuing to work with all teams to improve our consistency.

Information about the changes and our progress

You can find out more about our wider transformation in our Business Strategy, available on our website.¹ Do not forget to familiarise yourself with our customer charter.² This sets out what you can expect from us, and what we need from you. If you would like to find out more about our progress, please visit the HMLR blog or register for e-mail alerts.³ We look forward to working together to make conveyancing simpler, faster and cheaper for everyone.

1 ‘Business Strategy 2017-2022: preparing HM Land Registry to become the world’s leading land registry for speed, simplicity and an open approach to data’, available at: https://tinyurl.com/y93gwroz

2 ‘HM Land Registry customer charter’, available at: https://tinyurl.com/ y9ekj4zd

3 Subscribe to ‘HM Land Registry blog’ and sign up for e-mail updates at: https://hmlandregistry.blog.gov.uk/