Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department has taken to ensure that HM Land Registry completes new registrations within the 25 day turnaround period.

Government has approved HMLR’s business strategy for the next five years including a digital programme that will deliver enhancements to current system capability over the duration of HM Land Registry’s Business Strategy, and appointed a new and expanded Board to support the organisation to deliver its objectives.

HM Land Registry have plans in place to deliver and maintain improved capacity for new registrations and resilience. Since October 2017 366 new staff have joined the organisation and an additional 120 new recruits are expected to join in May 2018. Since 2014-15, 567 Apprentices have joined HMLR including 510 in the Operations directorate who directly contribute to processing applications for registration. This includes 138 Apprentices taken on by the Operations directorate in 2017-18. A number of measures are in place to improve HM Land Registry processes and productivity in order to increase output, including the use of overtime and system improvements.