Land Registry - General - Two Prestigious IT Awards

Date: 13 Sep 2005

Land Registry is delighted to announce that it has just won two prestigious IT awards.

Land Register Online, its first electronic service for the general public, has received a 2005 WebAward from the Web Marketing Association for outstanding achievement in website development.

And for the second time, Land Registry is the Grand Prize award winner in the Winter Corporation's 2005 Top Ten Programme for Database Size, Transaction Processing Systems.

John Wright, Land Registry's recently appointed Director of Information Systems, said:

"To again be identified as the world's largest online transaction processing database recognises the key role Land Registry plays in underpinning the economy by guaranteeing the ownership of trillions of pounds worth of property in England and Wales."

Land Registry today (13 September) also published its Annual Report and Accounts for 2004-05. The report shows that during the past year:

* a record number of applications were received and processed
* a fifth Charter Mark was awarded
* the Land Register Online full service was launched
* e-conveyancing was brought one step nearer as the e-lodgement pilot project went live
* significant progress was made in completing the Land Register for England and Wales.

Introducing the report, Peter Collis, CB, Hon RICS, Chief Land Registrar and Chief Executive, said:

"For Land Registry, 2004-05 was a year of two quite distinct halves. The first half of the year saw a continuation of the strong growth we had seen in previous years. But, after the summer, we saw the amount of work coming in to us fall away, seriously threatening our ability to achieve our cost per unit target.

"Our response was to step up our efforts to encourage voluntary registration work; to ensure that every application already lodged with us was actioned; and to cut back on any uncommitted or inessential expenditure. These efforts were successful - indeed so successful that, in the event, 2004-05 was another record-busting year. Overall, we handled two per cent more work than in 2003-04, faster than ever before, and we reduced our stocks of outstanding cases to the lowest level since we began counting them.

"We launched Land Register Online, our first electronic service aimed at the general public. We established our direct electronic discharge of mortgages service, whereby the lender's computer automatically notifies our computer when a mortgage has been paid off and the charge can be released. We completed the scanning of all those historic documents that are referred to on the Land Register, and we launched a pilot whereby practitioners can electronically lodge certain applications with us via our Land Registry Direct service.

"Ninety-eight point five per cent of our customers said they were satisfied or very satisfied with our services and 80 per cent thought we were better or much better than private sector firms they deal with. We received further endorsement of the quality of our services when we were awarded the Charter Mark for a record fifth time."

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