Land Registry Direct
Land Registry Direct
The Land Registry and its technology partner, Global Crossing Europe,launched in June 2000 an online information retrieval service that represents a major step forwards in electronic conveyancing. The low-cost Land Registry Direct service provides professionals in the legal, financial and property services, as well as a number of other professional clients, with on-line access to computerised records in a secure extranet environment.
The Land Registry can now begin to satisfy the demand for on-line access to some 17-million registered titles in England and Wales. Land Registry Direct is a prime example illustrating the Government's drive to transform the quality of information provision, using innovative and efficient e-business technology. The service will be a key component of the National Land Information Service that will integrate Land Registry data with that held by local authorities into a single portal, ultimately aiming to provide a total electronic conveyancing service.
Land Registry Direct replaces the existing dial-up service provided by Global Crossing Europe and which is used by some 6,500 subscribers who currently make on average 100,000 "views" a month. The new service combines increased functionality with low charges and is being targeted to a wide potential customer base, many of whom are still reliant on postal delivery of documents.
Global Crossing Europe has been awarded the contract to operate Land Registry Direct until June 2003. This follows the announcement last month of a £165 million contract to provide the Foreign and Commonwealth Office with a worldwide managed network linking 240 embassies, diplomatic missions and consulates.
The ability to view and download title plans showing clearly delineated boundaries for registered titles, and access to "deeds referred to" on the register that were previously only available in paper format, are two of the new features of Land Registry Direct. The system is designed to speed up and streamline the conveyancing process. Well in excess of 100 million filed images will be scanned into the Registry's database by 2004.
Chief Land Registrar and Chief Executive of HM Land Registry, Peter Coilis,said:
In partnership with Global Crossing Europe, we have a product that will contribute significantly to electronic conveyancing. The instantaneous retrieval and copying of documents at the press of a button is light years ahead of phoning through requests for documentation and waiting a day or two for the copies to arrive by post.
Martin Lea, managing director of Global Crossing in the UK, said:
Land Registry Direct is the latest fruition of a long collaboration with Global Crossing Europe which has seen the Registry lead from the front in exploiting new technology to improve information flows to the public. As a leading supplier of telecommunications to government, Global Crossing has been responsible for ground-breaking e-commerce initiatives, from the electronic submission of tax returns to the development of a pilot system to allow traders to submit Customs duty forms over the Internet.
Under Land Registry Direct, the previous £125 license fee per PC and an additional annual subscription of £200 is replaced by a one-off charge of£100, reduced to £50 for existing users migrating to the new service. Additional charges, such as the £12 fee to create a user identity, have also been eliminated. The new service also does away with the need for subscribers to pay for and install emulation software to allow PCs to communicate with the Registry's IBM mainframe. Instead, all users need to access the service is an off-the-shelf PC with a standard Web browser. In addition, the restricted text-based format of the former service is replaced by the more sophisticated and familiar Web browser front-end.
Subscribers can view registers via either the title number or a property address where the title number is not known. They can also lodge real-time priority official searches and place orders for copies of the register,certificates of inspection, title plans or documents. Security of service is assured by providing every user with a unique identifier and password which Global Crossing Europe and the Land Registry use to verify each customer access. These identifiers restrict the service to authorised users and confine database access to approved services.
The service can also be used by licensed conveyancers, local authorities,insurance companies and finance companies and other such account holders to check ownership details immediately rather than incur the delay of having the information sent by post.
The Government e-business strategy to modernise government envisaged that all departments would have initial e-business strategies in place by October 2000 with the longer term target of offering all government services online by 2005. Visit the agency Web site at: www.landreg.gov.uk
