Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment his Department has made of the drivers of and reasons for the doubling of the wage and salary costs of the Land Registry since April 2017.

HM Land Registry’s Annual Report and Accounts for 2016-17 and 2024-25 respectively show that staff costs for permanent HMLR employees have increased from £168 million to £326 million.

The drivers of this increase are a combination of the compound interest of annual pay increases, plus the increase in permanent employees from 4,148 at the end of March 2017, to 6,907 at the end of March 2025.

The principal reason for the staff increase at the Agency has been the need to invest in its people and systems to improve the services it provides following a period of historic underinvestment following the property market crash in 2007-08, prior to which HMLR had over 8,000 permanent employees.