Business Plan 2021 to 2024
Published 9 August 2021
Applies to England and Wales
Foreword/Executive summary
HM Land Registry plays a key role in the UK’s economic stability, security and growth. Our registers and the guarantees afforded by them underpin £7 trillion in property assets across England and Wales, with £1 trillion to £1.5 trillion in lending secured against it. The Land Register, a piece of Critical National Infrastructure, contains more than 26 million titles, providing financial and economic security across the UK. Last year, HM Land Registry processed more than 3 million applications to amend that register, alongside the delivery of over 19 million requests to access our records. Taken in the round, our services help ensure that:
- there is trust and confidence in land ownership
- the conveyancing process is quick, easy and secure
- property data supports a stable and innovative UK economy
The unprecedented challenges created by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic have re-emphasised the importance of the property market to the UK’s economy. HM Land Registry rose to the challenge, continuing to deliver critical services and keeping the market moving throughout. Details of our experiences over the past year are laid out in our Annual Report and Accounts.
This business plan sets out our plans for the 3 years ahead, wherein our key objectives are:
- Delivering what our customers are telling us they most need right now to meet the needs our customers have right now, which includes additional investment focused on optimising our operation, as well as accelerating the digitisation and automation of our services to enable more of them to be delivered in real-time.
- Enabling and driving change, pace and innovation in the property market to look ahead at how HM Land Registry can best enable and drive change, pace and innovation in the property market.
- Modernising our organisational culture and ways of working to modernise our organisational culture and ways of working, including by learning valuable lessons from 2020 to 21.
Our plans are most detailed for the 2021 to 22 financial year, in which we have budget certainty. Our submission into the 2021 Comprehensive Spending Review will support the delivery of our longer-term ambitions. We are, and will continue to be, funded by the fees associated with the delivery of our services, with fee levels set to cover our operating costs under normal market conditions.
Over the next year, we will be refreshing our vision for HM Land Registry’s role in the property market, focusing on those opportunities we are uniquely suited to deliver as we strive to support economic recovery and long-term growth across the UK. We believe, more than ever, that there is room to improve the way we understand and deal with property in England and Wales. Reducing friction in the market and making our data more accessible will deliver significant benefits for our economy and society today, as well as supporting net zero ambitions as part of a more sustainable future.
Our objectives 2021 to 2024
As we navigate unprecedented levels of uncertainty, the UK’s economic recovery is dependent on the stability of its institutions and effective business engagement. HM Land Registry is an important institution that collaborates closely with a wide range of businesses and other stakeholders. We help provide trust and confidence in land ownership, which enables ever-more diverse investment in the property market as well as securing loans to support entrepreneurship, education and other opportunities for property owners. We contribute to making the conveyancing process quick, easy and secure, helping to reduce market friction and preparing the way for a wholly-digital, wholly-secure conveyancing process that will make the financial value of property easier to realise. Finally, our property data supports a stable and innovative UK economy, increasing the efficiency of the property market and helping unleash the development of new markets based on geo-data. Our new performance framework is aligned to these 3 outcomes and the focus of this business plan directly supports them.
Over the next 12 to 36 months, in support of these outcomes, we will prioritise:
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Delivering what our customers are telling us they most need right now – this is primarily about improving our speed of service, so that property rights can be secured and guaranteed as quickly and efficiently as possible.
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Enabling and driving change and innovation in the property market to reduce friction and increase the economic potential of this vital sector – this is about ensuring we optimise our role in transforming how the property market operates to support long-term economic growth.
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Modernising our organisational culture and ways of working to develop a flexible and empowered staff – this is about optimising our workforce and estate to encourage productivity and net zero delivery as well as the wellbeing of our people, with particular emphasis on the lessons learned over the past year.
1. Delivering what our customers are telling us they most need right now
1.1 HM Land Registry processes roughly 100,000 service requests each day. Around 90% of these are critical to keeping the property market moving, and the remainder are essential to securing the rights of the millions of individuals and organisations globally who have chosen to invest in the UK. We interact with approximately 15,000 customers each year. Many of these are businesses in the conveyancing sector. Providing excellent customer service is, and will continue to be, our number one priority over the coming years.
1.2 Our customers have been clear about what they need from HM Land Registry: they want more consistency and speed from us. In February 2021, across all application types, we dealt with an application on average within 25 working days. We recognise, however, that there is a wide distribution around this median, with 30% of applications processed on day one and around 6% - the most complex cases – held within HM Land Registry for over 200 days. By the end of 2021 to 22, our ambition is to maintain the waiting time for our most complex cases, and over subsequent years we will continue to drive down processing times until all applications are back with our customers in around a month. To deliver this we need to:
- optimise our operational capacity and capability
- align our transformation portfolio to accelerate the pace of digitisation and automation
1.3 Around 75% of our people work on the front line, as caseworkers and land registration lawyers processing applications, or in our Customer Support Centre responding to queries and requests from businesses and citizens. Around 60% of our 2021 to 22 budget is focused on delivering these services, which includes a new £10m investment to optimise our operational capacity and capability. This investment will allow us to:
- recruit and train an additional 320 caseworkers (in addition to the c.250 needed to replace those expected to leave over the next year), while supporting others to progress into more senior roles, providing greater capacity for our more complex case types and increasing operational flexibility as we adjust to changes in intake types
- recruit and train an additional c.50 individuals into our Customer Support Centre, each of whom will be fully trained as caseworkers to ensure we are providing an expert and informed customer service
- build our customer insight and analytical capability to ensure that our longer-term development best meets customer needs and demands
1.4 HM Land Registry’s transformation plans are focused on delivering for our customers, particularly in making our services accessible, easy to use and delivered more quickly, without jeopardising the integrity of the registers we maintain. In response to feedback and, since the first lockdown, changes in how the market operates, HM Land Registry has focused on its portfolio to accelerate the pace of digitisation and automation of our services. In 2021 to 22, we are investing c.£28 million towards improving our customer experience, which includes helping to make the conveyancing process quicker, easier and more secure. Specifically, we will focus on:
- delivering those changes that will improve our services with minimum disruption to our customers – our transformation in its entirety will deliver new and simpler ways for customers to interact with us, including putting the infrastructure in place to ensure both Portal and Business Gateway users can take advantage of our digital services with minimum disruption (such as through application processing interfaces)
- digitising application processing for our simplest cases first – this means register updates, which comprise 70% of our manual applications. Focusing on these will generate the greatest operational efficiencies in the short term, enabling our caseworkers to concentrate on reducing processing times for more complex cases (particularly non-developer and first registration applications). Prioritising the digitisation of register updates will lay the foundations for automating our register change services over the medium term
- working with our customers now to prepare them for future ways of working with us. The continuing rollout of our Digital Registration Service will make it increasingly straightforward for customers to submit applications, reducing errors and processing times. We are also working with customers to run a pilot, exploring how full automation of casework might be achieved at scale in the future years of our transformation
Our response to the COVID-19 pandemic
HM Land Registry stood firm during the worst public health crisis in more than a century. We kept the market open by ensuring priority services were restored remotely within 2 days of the first national lockdown being announced. At that time, only 13% of our workforce started out with the IT equipment necessary to enable them to work from home. Over the subsequent 12 weeks we distributed more than 30,000 pieces of IT equipment and fully restored our services. We set up an Industry Forum to ensure our plans and priorities were informed by experts across the conveyancing sector, amending our processes, streamlining our services and fast-tracking critical aspects of our transformation – such as e-signatures – in response. Within 7 days of that first lockdown we set up a new Contact Us communication channel, enabling customers to self-serve and ensuring we could prioritise their urgent transactions. Like many organisations and despite our rapid response, we accrued a backlog of non-critical applications that we now need to clear to ensure the registers we manage are as up to date as possible.
The four keys to automating land registration
Automation and digital processing enable a more efficient and effective service for our customers. Building on our digital development and discovery, we have identified 4 elements that must be in place to enable end-to-end automation of land registration, while retaining trust and confidence in register data:
- we must have digital applications
- we must have trust in the application information
- our register data must be machine readable
- application processing must be automatable
In the coming period, as well as progressing our plans for Digital Registration Service, Digital Register and Application Processing, we will be piloting lawyer certification, which will help provide trust in the information we receive. Using the learning gained during this pilot, we will plot a future roadmap for automating all but the most complex of our casework, delivering significant improvements in application processing times over the years to come.
2. Enabling and driving change, pace and innovation in the property market
2.1 HM Land Registry is committed to supporting a conveyancing market that is quick, easy and secure. We will invest c.£71 million on the following aspects of our transformation during 2021 to 22, including £42 million specifically in LLC (Local Land Charges). Over the next 3 years we will focus on:
Local Land Charges (LLC) programme
LLC offers a proof of concept for how HM Land Registry can help drive increased transparency in the property market, improving access to information across local authority boundaries, which can also assist with planning and improving community cohesion. In recognition of the considerable benefits of this programme (see Benefits of the national LLC service, we have committed ourselves to increasing the pace of delivery, aiming to complete the migration of all LLC services from local authorities across England and Wales to HM Land Registry by 2025.
Enabling a digital property market
Demand for an end-to-end digital conveyancing process has been accelerated by COVID-19 and HM Land Registry has already responded at pace, rolling out e-signatures and cryptographic ID checking to reduce reliance on paper and face-to-face services. These innovations will increase the resilience of the conveyancing sector, as well as the value that can be derived from the property market as a whole. We will soon open up more secure and easier to use ‘qualified electronic signatures’. We will support the market in its development of online platforms by offering increasingly sophisticated digital integration with land registration services. We will work collaboratively on the concept of digital deeds as the kernel of online conveyances.
Releasing our data
As outlined in Fixing our Broken Housing Market, property data has a vital role to play in supporting the development of new housing stock, by helping private and public sector organisations identify land that may be suitable for housing. The proposals for a digital-first planning system, as set out in the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG)’s White Paper Planning for the Future, for a digital-first planning system depend on the ability to use HM Land Registry’s data. ‘Housing & Local Planning’ is one of the 9 key location data opportunities identified by the UK Geospatial Strategy. The true value of the geospatial and personal datasets we own is likely to be considerably greater, offering significant potential to drive innovation over the coming decades. Thinking about how we can best release this value will be a crucial strand of our strategy. Over the next year, we will collaborate with the Geospatial Commission to improve the quality, findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability (Q-FAIR) of our data. We also have 3 new data sets planned for release between now and April 2023.
The Local Land Charges Programme
Every local authority in England is required to hold a Local Land Charges register that records obligations affecting properties within their administrative area. The Infrastructure Act 2015 gave HM Land Registry powers to take over the service from local authorities in a phased approach, which began in Summer 2018. This is a historic step forward in the Government’s ambition to make the home-buying process simpler, faster and cheaper. It is also an important part of HM Land Registry’s Business Strategy to help improve the conveyancing process. The modernised service supports governments’ digital obligations and ambitions, focusing on data, places, infrastructure and improving business growth.
Benefits of the national LLC service
Group | Benefits of the national LLC service |
---|---|
Customers | - Cheaper service - Faster results - Simpler, more consistent service |
Local authorities | - More efficient service delivery - Enhanced data - Data verification |
UK plc | - Transparency and access to data - Innovation - Digital planning |
See Local Land Charges Programme for more information.
3. Modernising our organisational culture and ways of working
6,400 HM Land Registry staff
3.1 Our people – a workforce of nearly 6,400 – are at the heart of our business. As an operationally focused organisation, HM Land Registry is notably lean compared to other governmental organisations, with only 21% of staff working in central roles and less than 2% in senior management roles (grade 7 and above). As mentioned above, however, we must now increase the size of our workforce to meet our customers’ needs and expectations around processing times. Over the medium term, the increasing automation of more straightforward application types will require new skillsets. Our caseworkers will need to spend a greater proportion of time exercising their expert professional judgement and engaging in complex decision-making. As part of our transformation, we are investing heavily in our people – individuals, teams, managers and the culture as a whole – to prepare for this.
3.2 Our cultural transformation is already well under way. Our ambition is to foster an environment that empowers our people, encourages innovation and promotes a strong connection to our organisation and its values. We are conscious that it will require a new style of leadership, one that prioritises good people management over process, establishing working environments that provide opportunities for career development and a focus on personal responsibility. We are building towards this through extensive leadership training, while also filling capability gaps that are necessary to support our transition into central government, in line with our strategy and transformation ambitions. These new capability areas include additional resource this year in Organisational Design, Strategy, Analysis, Customer Insight and Strategic Workforce Planning. Our investment plans for 2021 to 22 include c.£7.5 million to further this important work.
3.3 Like all public and private sector organisations, our responsibilities to our people grew and changed considerably during 2020 to 21, as we adjusted to new working conditions in which the safety and wellbeing of our people was critical. The pandemic effectively fast-tracked many aspects of planned changes, laying the foundations for an empowered workforce, which we will build on over the years to come. We have set aside £3.5 million for our Smarter Working programme in 2021 to 22, which is considering what future requirements we will have of our workspaces, people and culture, technology and leadership, in the broad context of the government’s ambitions for long-term growth and achieving net zero. As we adapt our ways of working, we will retain the culture of pride and passion in what we do, exhibited by HM Land Registry staff across the organisation
Our new performance framework
4.1 This business plan has been developed with a focus on the outcomes HM Land Registry wants to deliver. Our new performance framework has been designed according to the principles laid out in the Public Value Framework, aligning our key performance indicators (KPIs) against the societal benefits HM Land Registry delivers:
- trust and confidence in land ownership
- a conveyancing process that is quick, easy and secure
- property data that supports a stable and innovative UK economy
4.2 The KPIs detailed within this framework are designed to endure. Internally, we have introduced a full ecosystem of performance data to support it, including business continuity metrics established to monitor our response to the on-going impacts of COVID-19. We will review the full suite of management information available across the organisation, thus ensuring our governance boards have the information they need to support outcome focused decision-making, including early warning signs when performance is at risk.
4.3 We have provided trajectories to illustrate the expected impact of the plans outlined in this document for each KPI over the year 2021 to 22, in which we have budget certainty.
KPI 1: customer trust in the integrity and accuracy of the registers
Question KPI seeks to answer: do our customers trust the information held on the registers?
Summary of measure: quarterly survey conducted by Ipsos Mori which tracks the percentage of customers rating our ability to ensure the integrity and accuracy of the register as 8-10 (on a scale of 1 to 10).
Past performance and KPI trajectory for 2021 to 22
KPI 2: customer satisfaction
Question KPI seeks to answer: are we delivering a service that aligns with our customers’ needs?
Summary of measure: quarterly survey conducted by Ipsos Mori which tracks the percentage of customers rating our overall service as 8-10 (on a scale of 1 to 10).
Past performance and KPI trajectory for 2021 to 22
KPI 3: staff engagement
Question KPI seeks to answer: how connected do our staff feel towards their work and our organisation?
Summary of measure: staff engagement scores from the annual Civil Service People Survey and internal quarterly pulse surveys. Staff engagement is also monitored through a fortnightly wellbeing survey.
Past performance and KPI trajectory for 2021 to 22
KPI 4: Cost of our Services
Question KPI seeks to answer: how effectively is our business being run?
Summary of measure: this is a cost to serve metric, which provides the total organisational costs of delivering individual ‘units’ or services to our customers. It considers total costs, including investment in transformation as well as the costs directly associated with the delivery of our services.
Past performance and KPI trajectory for 2021 to 22
KPI 5: accuracy of new entries on the register
Question KPI seeks to answer: how are changes to the register impacting register integrity?
Summary of measure: this metric assesses the risks to the register arising from any errors in new register entries. It takes into account both the volume of potential errors and their impact.
Past performance and KPI trajectory for 2021 to 22
KPI 6: application completed
Question KPI seeks to answer: does HM Land Registry have the right capacity and capability to deliver its services in a timely manner?
Summary of measure: the percentage of applications (automated and manual) completed against those received. Reported as a year-to-date figure on a 12-month rolling basis to remove seasonality.
Past performance and KPI trajectory for 2021 to 22
All Application types
Applications to update or create new register entries only
KPI 7A: speed of our services
Question KPI seeks to answer: how long do applications spend in HM Land Registry? (excluding time awaiting a customer response and other third party action)
Summary of measure: time taken by HM Land Registry to process applications, excluding any time spent awaiting customer response and other third party action. This KPI is expressed the median working days across those applications to update or create new register entries.
Past performance and KPI trajectory for 2021 to 22
All Application types
Speed of service – all tier 1
Speed of service – expedites
KPI 7B: time taken to change the register
Question KPI seeks to answer: how long does it take for the register to accurately reflect ownership?
Summary of measure: this KPI focuses on the accuracy of the register as a complete data set. It measures the total time taken for 95% of updates to be reflected on the register, which includes how long an application spends with HM Land Registry (the focus of KPI 7A), plus any time the application is back with a customer or third party to provide more information, plus however long it may take for a case to go through a tribunal. As this is a measure of the total time it takes for 95% of updates to go through, it is subject to fluctuation when particularly long tribunal cases are reaching resolution
Past performance and KPI trajectory for 2021 to 22
As per KPI 7A, our investment plans will deliver the most significant performance improvements from 2022 to 23.
Our key deliverables
1. Delivering what our customers are telling us they most need right now
Deliverable | When we will deliver it |
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Implement the agreed Operations Resourcing Plan, including recruitment, progression and in-grade development to increase capability and capacity (net additional caseworker capacity of 320 FTE by March 2022). | 2021 to 22 |
Continue to develop the Land Registration Academy, designing and implementing high-quality, accessible training and professional development to build critical/key capability by March 2022, and delivering a range of continuous development options to enhance land registration expertise by March 2024. Agree proposed approach to professional accreditation by March 2022. | 2021 to 24 |
Enhance Management Information (MI) to support operational and strategic decision-making, by developing more granular availability data to allow us to understand productivity and utilisation, and by developing tools to automate more of our MI production. Develop tools to allow managers to self-serve and recombine a wide range of data, supporting data-driven decision-making throughout the organisation through establishing tools to enable real-time availability and reducing time on developing MI packs by January 2024. | 2021 to 24 |
Get the Customer Support Centre accredited by Service Mark from the Institute of Customer Service, demonstrating best in practice in the UK by September 2021. | 2021 to 22 |
Conclude the initial roll out of Brilliant Teams, Inspiring Leaders, an initiative to invest in developing our people, equipping managers and leaders with the skills to devise a coaching and outcome-focussed culture, driving engagement, performance and a positive customer experience, across 13 locations by the end of March 2022 and all offices by the end of May 2022. Develop internal operational excellence capability and embed Brilliant Teams, inspiring leaders. | 2021 to 23 |
Progress the Comprehensive Registration Strategy: creating a more definitive record of property ownership in England and Wales by 2030. | 2021 to 24 |
40% of all applications received via the Digital Registration Service by the end of March 2022. | 2021 to 22 |
60% of all Register Update applications processed in our new Application Processing system, providing a more efficient service and supporting digitisation and opportunities for future automation of casework by March 2022. | 2021 to 22 |
Progress the Digital Register, which aims to enable digitisation and automation of internal processes by making data machine readable, with 60% of title data structured by the end of 2021 to 22. | 2021 to 22 |
80% of Register Update applications handled through workflow; our internal work allocation tool, by January 2022. | 2021 to 22 |
Launch ‘Search for Land and Property’ tool (currently in private Beta), enabling customers to apply for official copies and monitor property within our new service, removing the need for property alert by 2021 to 22 | 2021 to 22 |
Introduce a new API Gateway making it easier for customers to access and consume b2b services by the end of 2021 to 22. | 2021 to 22 |
2. Enabling and driving change, pace and innovation in the property market
Deliverable | When we will deliver it |
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Collaborate with the Geospatial Commission to understand how we can improve the quality, findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability (ie the FAIR Principles) of our data, to enable future development and new use cases for unlocking additional value. Review to be completed in 2021 to 22 | 2021 to 22 |
Migrate local authority (LA) data into the Local Land Charges programme according to the schedule below: | 2021 to 24 |
2021 to 22 – migrating over 30 LAs across England and Wales. | 2021 to 22 |
202 to 23 – migrating over 70 LAs across England and Wales | 2022 to 23 |
2023 to 24 – migrating over 70 LAs across England and Wales | 2023 to 24 |
Publish 3 further datasets and enhance existing datasets enhanced in accordance with FAIR principles (FAIR data are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) and reviewed by April 2023. | 2022 to 23 |
75 to 85% of approved publishable datasets available on our new data publication service, making it easier for our customers to access our data by April 2024. | 2023 to 24 |
Pilot a new lawyer certification scheme in 2021 to 22 to support its introduction across all application types to change the register (a key to automation). | 2021 to 22 |
Introduce Qualified Digital Signatures, which will reduce the burden on our customers by making the signing process simpler by the end of 2021 to 22. | 2021 to 22 |
Deliver a Spending Review settlement that secures the budget and flexibility HM Land Registry needs to deliver against its priorities over the planning period, Autumn 2021. | 2021 to 22 |
Publish our Business Strategy for beyond 2022 that reflects our renewed strategic ambition and the contribution we will make to a healthy, sustainable economy. | 2022 to 24 |
3. Modernising our organisational culture and ways of working
Deliverable | When we will deliver it |
---|---|
Launch our Diversity and Inclusion Strategy in 2021, measured against associated governance and delivered against agreed associated action plans. | 2021 to 22 |
Develop and embed apprenticeship programmes that provide high-quality entry routes and development programmes that support our Business Strategy and People Strategy objectives by October 2023. | 2021 to 24 |
Launch a Culture Model using the Leadership Group as the key dissemination route for embedding principles and to ensure team and Directorate action plans are in place by June 2021 and measurable from Q2, with assurance and reporting through to the People and Estates Committee. | 2021 to 22 |
Progress the Smarter Working Programme, which seeks to establish a hybrid approach to how our people will work in the future. This will be an iterative process, enabling our expert people to meet the needs of our customers while driving efficiency. The internal capability to deliver this will be established by the end of 2021 to 22. | 2021 to 22 |
Enable our people to work seamlessly and flexibly across locations, including home, by replacing all desktop PCs with laptops and investment in modern workplace technologies by the end of 2021 to 22. | 2021 to 22 |
Close all HM Land Registry’s privately operated data centres as part of a strategic move to government-shared hosting over the next 3 years. | 2021 to 24 |
Our finances
HMLR secured a funding envelope of £364 million Resource Departmental Expenditure Limit (RDEL) Cash and £58 million Capital Departmental Expenditure Limit (CDEL) from HM Treasury (HMT) for 2021 to 22. Although a budget has been set that is in line with the HMT delegation, HMLR has areas where significant further investment in both casework processing and transformation activities are possible, ensuring any emerging in-year underspends are able to be re-invested quickly and efficiently.
Our submission to the 2021 Comprehensive Spending Review, which will set our budget for subsequent years, will support the delivery of our longer-term ambitions.
HM Land Registry Summary 2021 to 22 investment
RDEL cash
Expense | Delegated budget |
---|---|
Staff costs (excluding overtime) | 257.8 |
Overtime | 12 |
Sub total staff | 269.8 |
Agency staff costs | 0.2 |
Other staff/personnel costs | 2.6 |
Staff training | 1.0 |
Travel and subsistence | 0.6 |
Professional services and consultancy | 2.4 |
Office running costs (for example, rent, rates) | 16.6 |
Property maintenance | 4.7 |
IT (for example, maintenance contracts, licences) | 22.2 |
Reprographic costs | 2.0 |
File store costs | 4.3 |
Survey and mapping | 2.7 |
Other operating costs (for example postage, independent adjudicator) | 7.9 |
Indemnity | 7.0 |
Sub total non staff costs | 74.2 |
RDEL cash total | 344.0 |
Local Land Charges (all) | 17 |
Transformation portfolio (non staff) | 15.7 |
Capitalised staff costs | (11.0) |
Non staff recharges | (1.3) |
Total | 364.3 |
CDEL cash
Expense | Delegated budget |
---|---|
Local Land Charges | 28.4 |
Digital investment | 20.4 |
Enablers | 8.9 |
Total | 57.7 |