Agency changes handling of cancelled applications and evidence for registrations in effort to direct more customers to online channels
The Land Registry has stepped up its efforts to direct service users to its online services with two moves with an emphasis on its customer portal.
It has announced that from the beginning of next week it will return cancelled applications through the portal, even if it was sent by post – as long as that customer is a member of an organisation that uses the portal.
When customers receive results of cancelled applications online, they will include a digital copy of each document they submitted in their Postal Downloads area. They will then be able to use this if they re-lodge an application through the electronic Document Registration Service (e-DRS).
But it has imposed restrictions in saying it will not do so for first registrations, when the application contains documents in excess of 20MB, or if the paper application included documents uploaded using the portal’s Reply to Requisition service.
Evidence change
The second move is to enable customers to be more specific about the type of evidence they are lodging online to support a land registration application. They can now provide marriage, death or birth certificates, and probate documents.
“Our customers asked us to make this change,” Land Registry said. “They told us that when they lodged evidence online, they trawled the relevant drop down list for these specific options. Up until now, customers have been correctly selecting the generic ‘evidence’ option from the list, but only after they were satisfied there was not a more specific option on the list.
“Making this assessment takes time so we expect the change to save our customers time, while it enables us to route their applications to the most appropriate caseworker.”
These are the latest steps in Land Registry’s programme of increasing the electronic submission and handling of applications through the e-DRS. It launched the electronic service in 2012 and began to scan paper applications at the beginning of the registration process in 2014.
More recently, it replaced its Day List Enquiry service for businesses with an online channel named Application Enquiry in March of last year.
