Land Charges and Agricultural Credits

The Land Charges Department maintains registers of land charges, pending actions, writs and orders affecting land and other encumbrances registered against the names of owners of property that is not registered under the Land Registration Acts.

Agricultural Credits is responsible for maintaining a register of short-term loans by banks. These charges are secured on farming stock and other agricultural assets of the farmer.

This year the two departments dealt with a total of 5,222,236 applications, an increase of 0.7 per cent on 2005/6, mainly due to an increase in the number of insolvency registration applications.

Search and official copy applications made by telephone, direct access and fax increased to 83 per cent of the total (up from 76 per cent), with 84 per cent of official copy applications being delivered in this way.

Sixty-two per cent of land charge searches are now processed through Land Registry Direct and the National Land Information Service. The percentage of telephone searches conducted as a proportion of total search applications received fell to 20 per cent (down from 30 per cent).