Fee changes in New Year

New fees in the Registers of Scotland come into force on 10 January 2011 under an order now signed by ministers

13th December 2010 | Registers of Scotland

Background

Registers of Scotland (RoS) will be charging new fees for our registration and information services from 10 January 2011. This follows a public consultation exercise that ran from June until September. Scottish Ministers have approved the fees and signed the Amendment Order, which can be viewed at ros.gov.uk/ feereview2010, along with guidance on the new fees and the consultation documents.

RoS operates as a trading fund. This means that we are entirely self-financing, covering our expenditure primarily through the fees that we charge for our registration and information services. The new fees are being introduced as part of a financial sustainability review and will restore fee levels to full cost recovery for the services that RoS provides.

Registration and recording fees

The minimum fee for transfer applications submitted in paper format will increase from £30 to £60, with the ARTL minimum fee increasing from £20 to £50. All other fee bands will increase by 20%, except those applying to properties for which the consideration is greater than £1 million, which will remain unchanged. The fee for miscellaneous deeds or for registering or recording any deed relating to a standard security will increase from £30 to £60 for paper applications and from £20 to £50 for ARTL applications.

A new fee of £30 is to be introduced for applications rejected prior to being accepted for the Land Register application record. The cancellation fee will be set at the application fee, but with a cap of £400. Fees for the Chancery and Judicial Registers remain unchanged except for an increase from £8 to £10 for handling second and subsequent extracts and for copies. There is no longer a provision linked to the feeing of related applications submitted in a number of deeds. These applications will now be charged like any other application with each deed being charged on its own merit.

The consultation paper proposed to charge an additional fee of £400 for constitutive deeds containing real burdens. This fee has not been included within the Amendment Order, but may be revisited at a future date. In the case of housing developments, the Keeper believes that the use of a deed of conditions or a deed of real burdens is more appropriate and would improve the registration process.

Information fees

The standard Registers Direct fee will increase from £1.80 plus VAT to £3 plus VAT. Nil returns on Registers Direct will continue to attract no charge and free access to our online Scotland’s house prices will also continue. The fees for reports, copies and extracts, and the provision of information to customers such as the Land Values report, will rise in line with costs.

To reflect the costs involved, RoS is introducing some new charges for the provision of information. Additional charges of £8 will be introduced for searches conducted by RoS staff from letter, fax or email requests and £12 for those requested in person at our Customer Service Centres. A fee of £50 will be introduced for our pre-registration enquiries service and an additional fee of £15 will be introduced for personal presentments of applications at our Customer Service Centres.

VAT change

The national increase in VAT from 17.5% to 20% is scheduled to take place on 4 January 2011. To minimise the impact on customers, RoS will continue to charge customers 17.5% on those services that attract VAT until the new fees come into force on 10 January 2011. This will ensure that customers only need to manage the changes required for one set of fee changes.

Prior to the changes coming into force, RoS will be issuing further communications on the changes, including a Registers Update, website improvements, a new fee calculator and eBulletin alerts. If you have any queries, contact Hugh Welsh on 0141 306 1513 or hugh.welsh@ros.gov.uk