Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the average time taken to process first registrations of land at His Majesty’s Land Registry; and what steps he is taking to reduce the number of pending registrations.

HM Land Registry (HMLR) publishes information each month about its latest processing times on GOV.UK here.

Applications to HMLR can be expedited free of charge if registration is needed urgently for financial (including remortgaging), legal or personal reasons. More than 95% of expedited cases are processed within 10 days.

HMLR recognises that it is not currently processing some non-urgent applications fast enough. Improving speed of service is the top priority for HMLR and it is addressing this urgently through a combination of recruitment, training, and automation. It also has specialist teams focussing on the oldest complex cases with a specific goal to reduce the processing times for these applications. These efforts have already seen a reduction in the overall age of applications with HMLR and it is committed to reducing waiting times further in the months ahead.