Performance

Strategic objective 2: To introduce improved secondary legislation for land registration progressively from 2003

The Land Registration Act 2002 and the associated Land Registration Rules 2003 came into force on Monday 13 October 2003.

The new Act was the outcome of six years’ joint work by the Law Commission, Land Registry, the Department for Constitutional Affairs and other departments. It is the first major overhaul of the land registration system for over 75 years.

The changes within the Act will help us deal with the demands of our customers in the future, laying the foundations on which e-conveyancing will be built.

Preparing for the new Act was a huge challenge. The new legislation needed to be supported by a host of changes to our working practices, to our computer programmes and to our database. To prepare ourselves for this, we: 

• launched a major publicity campaign, to help property and conveyancing professionals prepare for the implementation of the Act
• set up an action line to deal with enquiries about the Act
• provided training on the new practices and procedures for over 8,000 members of staff and over 20,000 practitioners.

We were delighted that 97 per cent of our customers were satisfied or very satisfied with our overall communication of the changes.