Letter: inaccuracies in the register

For some time now I have been concerned about the increasing number of mistakes made by Register House when dealing with applications. However, in recent weeks matters have reached a new high (low?).

In the first case title was in the joint names of two people who had granted a security. The security was shown on the title sheet as being granted by only one of the parties. In another case I received the title sheet correctly showing my clients’ security in the charges section. However, on checking the file, I noted that we had still to receive the discharge of the seller’s charge. The Keeper had obviously seen fit to discharge the existing security without receiving a discharge! In the third case, we received a legal report disclosing no securities. It was only on checking the title that we discovered that there was an existing standard security registered against the property.

The Registers clearly set great store by giving us monthly statistics telling us of their efficiency in turning around applications for registration and, of course, are not slow to charge us for any mistakes we make. I would be interested to see published statistics showing the number of title sheets returned by practitioners to correct mistakes.

I wonder if speed and efficiency are being achieved at the expense of accuracy.