In a letter to its chair, Neil Sachdev, Baroness Taylor of Stevenage, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, on behalf of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, said the Land Registry should develop a business plan for 2026-27.
She said Land Registry should work with the government to consider options to “restructure its fees and charges model, ensuring this work is aligned with the government’s plans to reduce the cost of living and the cost of home buying and selling”.
Land Registry delays affecting market
Taylor said professionals and citizens should know what to expect from the Land Registry and how long applications would take, adding: “I remain concerned about the impact the age and volume of outstanding applications is having on customers and the operation of the housing market.”
She said the organisation should build on its recent success and make further progress on reducing the number of outstanding, older applications.
Following the fee increase in 2024, where some services more than doubled in price, as well as a “strong spending review settlement”, Taylor said customers had high expectations that they would see the benefits of greater investment.
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“HMLR should maximise the use of automation and new technologies such as artificial intelligence to speed up this work, prioritising investment that delivers benefits for customers in the near term and drawing on wider expertise across government,” she wrote.
Taylor urged the Land Registry to support the implementation of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 and further reforms, especially the recently published draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill.
She said the Land Registry would play a “central role” in the reinvigorated commonhold system.
Taylor said she was “delighted” that legislation to deliver contractual control arrangements had been put to parliament and progress had been made on its design. These regulations aim to improve transparency around land ownership, making it mandatory to show who controls how land is used and developed.
She added that the Land Registry should now work to make sure the data collection system is ready to launch in April next year, adding that she also looked forward to a detailed strategy for accelerating completion.
She welcomed the organisation’s work to open up data on land ownership, as well as its intention to add INSPIRE IDs, which show the location of freehold registered property, and Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs), numbers to identify each addressable location, to datasets as soon as this year.
Taylor wrote: “HMLR should also ensure that these priorities are explicitly reflected in business planning activity, with clear milestones, resource allocation and performance measures that demonstrate how each priority will be delivered and tracked through the 2026–27 plan.”
