HM Land Registry has said the threat of another coronavirus outbreak will make people less tolerant of a paper-heavy conveyancing process and has outlined its own digital progress.
According to The Law Gazette, in Land Registry’s latest annual report, chair Michael Mire anticipates a greater desire to make property transactions more digital over the coming year, saying conveyancing still has too many paper-based processes compared with other sectors of the economy. He said, “This has been tolerated by consumers up until now, but the potential threat of a future outbreak will change those expectations.”
Land Registry will look to digitise submitting and processing the most common transaction types, initially focusing on applications to remove a mortgage, transfer ownership and add a new charge.
According to The Law Gazette, Andrew Trigg, acting director of digital, data and technology, said ‘frictionless’ digital conveyancing would require structured data. In a step towards this, the registry will introduce a digital registration service this summer, which will validate data before it is submitted, reducing the need for paper.
Trigg said: “Our robots now examine more than 25,000 applications per week to check whether any other corresponding applications for the same land or property already exist in the system. This saves valuable time for our registration experts. We are testing how artificial intelligence can further reduce time-consuming manual tasks, with some promising early results.”
