Land Registry Complaint - 19 weeks delays for title registration

LogicCity

ATTENTION OF LAND REGISTRY

Dear Sir / Madam,

I am writing to complain regarding the highly delayed services we have received from Land Registry. It has been 19 weeks (4 months and 19 days) that our application has been sitting in your queue, and no one at Land Registry has been able to tell us why the delay or when it will be looked at.

My solicitor had "resubmitted" the application on 24 March 2015, and there has been absolutely no movement on my application since then.

Please note my initially application was submitted on 15 October 2014 which was rejected thus the resubmission.

I called your Customer Service department today - 03 Aug 2015 and spoke to Amanda, and she told me to get my solicitor to check with yourselves and to inquire the reason of the delay as the application has still not been looked into it. On the other hand, my solicitor tells me they contacted you on 07 July 2015, and that it is still under backlog queue.

I cannot understand why it is taking this long (133 days and still counting) for Land Registry to review our resubmitted application file which is still sitting in your queue to process.

Please let me know what is going on, and a timeline of when my application will be reviewed.

I have already emailed you today

Thank you.

Land_Registry

LogicCity - truly sorry to hear of the difficulties you are having but I need some more details to be able to track your email down and/or the previous details of the solicitor's contact for example

Can you email me at customer.service@landregistry.gsi.gov.uk please so I can then use your email address/name to track the submitted email

Howdoesthiswork

Dear Sir/Madam,

As the above written by LogicCity, I too have been experiencing completely unacceptable delays in the processing of my purchase which completed the 27th of February.

On enquiry to the LR some weeks ago all I received was a form-letter designed to be a blanket response. I pushed the individual for a proper response and all I was granted was that i was had to pay for a copy and in that I would find out if the titles had been registered or not.

Really?! I have already paid the LR through my solicitor's charges and I should just pay twice to suit your troubles?

My personal finances are resting on this inefficient system, please respond with some investigation to the issue.

This message is also emailed.

Shenl0101

The Land Registry are suffering severe staff shortages and delays across the board - not longer after dropping their prices and making everyone redundant! We have a commercial arrangement with the Land Registry with our own support team and its gone from being top class to near useless.

Land_Registry

Howdoesthiswork wrote: »

Dear Sir/Madam,

As the above written by LogicCity, I too have been experiencing completely unacceptable delays in the processing of my purchase which completed the 27th of February.

On enquiry to the LR some weeks ago all I received was a form-letter designed to be a blanket response. I pushed the individual for a proper response and all I was granted was that i was had to pay for a copy and in that I would find out if the titles had been registered or not.

Really?! I have already paid the LR through my solicitor's charges and I should just pay twice to suit your troubles?

My personal finances are resting on this inefficient system, please respond with some investigation to the issue.

This message is also emailed.

Howdoesthiswork - have picked up your email and will investigate it further

I'll post back on here in general terms once I have done so as well

Land_Registry

Just to update on Howdoesthiswork's earlier post re a current registration delay

Unfortunately the registration are indeed still awaiting to be processed despite having been received by us on 21st May. The expectation is that they will be processed in the next 2 weeks.

This is clearly an issue for us with delays on certain types of applications, including new leases as in this example. As you would expect we are trying a number of things to address this and where a registration is 'urgent', for example where there is a linked transaction such as an onward sale, remortgage then we will do our best to expedite matters.

Howdoesthiswork has of course already received the standard response to such an enquiry although I have some concerns re the advice given to check online and am investigating this further. We should in most cases be able to at least advise as to a likely timescale for processing and suggest that customers contact us again, preferably by email, to check on progress.

westv

Shenl0101 wrote: »

The Land Registry are suffering severe staff shortages and delays across the board - not longer after dropping their prices and making everyone redundant! We have a commercial arrangement with the Land Registry with our own support team and its gone from being top class to near useless.

You can always rely on governments to muck up perfectly reliable and profitable services.

Moonface

Shenl0101 wrote: »

The Land Registry are suffering severe staff shortages and delays across the board - not longer after dropping their prices and making everyone redundant!

This is exactly what's happened. There are thousands of applications waiting to be dealt with. And I mean thousands....overtime, recruiting apprentices is just not enough. Hundreds of greatly experienced staff have been made redundant over the past few years and as a result there just aren't enough staff to deal with the volume of work. And it doesn't look to be getting any better any time soon...

princeofpounds

You can always rely on governments to muck up perfectly reliable and profitable services.

To be fair, historically the land registry has been one of the better-run public services and it usually ticks away in the background almost being taken for granted.


They might have messed things up this year with regards to resourcing, but don't forget they also dropped their fees - how often do you hear of a government department becoming cheaper and more efficient, and then passing those savings onto the consumer?


They have also had a consistently helpful attitude and responsiveness on this forum over the years - how many government departments do you see helping people like that?


Perhaps they went too far this time - hopefully it gets fixed quickly. Everyone can (and probably should) complain as much as is justified, but I hope they also get credit for the positive things they have achieved over time too.

DaftyDuck

They also reply in a prompt and polite manner on this unconnected forum, even when the requests are... abrupt, to say the least!

harrys_dad

Congratulations to all those at Land Registry and elsewhere who do their best to provide a decent public service despite cuts, privatisation etc etc.

One day people in this country will realise that there is a connection between what they pay in tax and what they get back in public services.

Not forgetting of course that the most efficient services get sold off or tendered out for private profit, and service quality goes down the pan.