RoS hosted the Future of Conveyancing conference on behalf of the Scottish conveyancing industry in June 2021. This is the fifth in a series of blogs to continue the discussion that was started at that event.

During the conference we asked for your feedback on the practical changes you’d like to see and what challenges may stand in our way. This blog addresses the feedback which falls into the category of “subjects which are specific to RoS”.

I have addressed some of the main themes from the feedback below.

Turnaround time for first registrations

Some people expressed a desire for faster application turnaround times, in particular for first registrations. While the vast majority of Registers of Scotland’s work is completed within our service standards, we have publicly recognised that this is not the case for all our work

RoS recognises that there are circumstances in which an application not being completed on the land register will impact our customers or their clients. We are committed to working collaboratively to find the right resolution to any issue. I have discussed some of the ways in which we will reduce the amount of work in our backlog and increase turnaround times in my recent blog.

RoS has implemented several mechanisms that will minimise the impact on our customers. This includes our expedite service, free copies of deeds still waiting to be registered and our commitment not to reject any application after three months unless we legally must.

We are also in the process of recruiting additional staff who we expect to start with us in the new year. That recruitment is targeted at increasing our capacity to process registration applications and will contribute to improving First Registration turnaround times as well as increasing the number of Transfers of Part we can process.

You can find out more about our expedite service by viewing a recording of a recent webinar.

Easier access to copy deeds

We also heard that people would like easier access to copy deeds. We are fully committed to making RoS data as accessible and helpful as possible. The scale of this task is significant but one I am pleased to say that we are already making good progress on.

In our work on the Sasine Register, Register of Judgments and the Register of Inhibitions we have moved 54 million deeds and images to the cloud. This work involves not only the migration of these records of national importance but also work to index them. The combined migration and indexing will enable RoS to take the next steps towards self-service copy deeds.

Placing our data in a modern, secure, flexible location significantly increases its accessibility and creates the potential to achieve greater data insights. Not only can we better interrogate the information which is in our registers we also have a greater understanding of customer needs and how they interact with our services.

You can find out more in our recent series of blogs on our goal to move registration to the cloud.

We will continue to keep you up to date on our work on copy deeds as we progress.

Encourage lenders to use the digital discharge service (DDS)

Some felt that it would be helpful to encourage more lenders to use the digital discharge service. We are continuing to promote uptake and we have made good progress.

A recent update to the system means that the software requirements to move to the new DDS cards are very straightforward and we are close to bringing on two more large lenders on board – one before Christmas and one at the start of the year.

We have a clear programme to work with those not currently utilising the efficiencies and extra security that our Digital Discharge Service can bring. We will continue to expand uptake and promote the mutual benefits of the service with the support and advocacy of our partners across the industry.

Ability to filter colours on title plans

Someone suggested that it would be helpful to be able to filter colours on title plans.

We are currently working to update our mapping systems with the latest features. We have planned to include this functionality, and it will be available in future iterations of the system for staff and customers.

Improvements to Plans Reports

We also received suggestions for improvements people would like to see on Plans Reports.

We provide Plans Reports as a commercial service and are in the process of updating the platform.

Watch this space for further information on how the new system will work and the benefits it will offer.

I hope that that is a helpful run through of some of the additional comments which we have received, and I would like to thank everyone again for taking the time to attend the conference and submit their feedback.