Stay up to date with everything happening at Registers of Scotland (RoS) with our monthly update.

Key messages:

• Changes to plans reports
• Changes to digital extracts
• New register – Register of Persons Holding a Controlled Interest in Land
• Sustainability and climate change strategy 2021-26
• Who owns Scotland?
• Functional Completion of the Land Register
• Future of Conveyancing Conference – follow up blog
• Register Land and Property – now open to all

Registers of Scotland continues to provide the majority of our services digitally or remotely. RoS offices remain closed to external visitors.

Changes to plans reports

Our plans reports service is changing in November. Once live, all plans reports should be ordered through our new portal. The new service is more accessible, clearer to use and more easily updated based on customer feedback. All records from the existing portal will be available on the new one.

What’s new?

• An improved dashboard giving you complete access to requests and reports across your organisation.
• An increase in maximum document size from 20MB to 75MB for uploads with drag and drop files.
• The ability to upload and view shapefiles within your request.
• A new way to invoice – sending your invoices directly to the email address linked to the FAS account.

Please look out for updated plans report guidance and information on knowledge base soon, including a service walkthrough video.

Legal and Combined reports should still be ordered on the existing portal. Please look out for more information about changes to this service soon.

Changes to digital extracts

We’ve changed the way we provide some of our extracts. We now issue digital extracts from the following registers:

• General Register of Sasines
• Land Register of Scotland

The way in which extracts are requested hasn’t changed but they are now emailed as PDF attachments. These extracts will feature digital seals and a digital certificate to guarantee authenticity, carrying the same legal standing as traditional paper-based extracts.

For further information please visit our knowledge base.

Register of Persons Holding a Controlled Interest in Land – webinars

The Register of Persons Holding a Controlled Interest in Land (RCI) is a new RoS register, required by law, that will be operational from 1 April 2022 and will be free to use.

We’re running two webinars where you can hear more about its purpose, outcome and who needs to register.

• 11th November
• 25th November

Sign up for one of our sessions.

Sustainability and climate change strategy 2021-26

RoS is committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2045 and we have set out our plans for the next 5 years in our new Sustainability & Climate Change Strategy 2021-26.

Read the full strategy. You can also find out more by listening to our recent podcast with our Sustainability Manager.

Who owns Scotland?

If you were watching BBC1 Scotland on Sunday night you will have seen RoS was featured in a two-part documentary on ‘Who Owns Scotland?’.

You can catch up on both episodes on iplayer.

Functional completion of the land register

Functional completion is when property that transacts regularly is on the land register. It’s the term used to identify the stage of land register completion that will benefit the majority of the general public. We have registered about 83% of these addresses already and we plan to achieve the rest as soon as possible.

Find out more about RoS’ approach to functional completion in a new blog by our Head of Land Register Completion, Fi McKie.

Future of Conveyancing Conference – follow up blog

Read the latest in our series of blogs following up from the Future of Conveyancing Conference where I set out the areas in which RoS will look to the wider industry to lead and what we can do to facilitate further best practice sharing.

Register land and property

We’ve introduced a new way to register land and property, connecting your advance notices, applications and submissions.

RLP now supports dispositions and securities over the whole of a registered title as well as plots which form part of an approved development plan (DPA).

We’ve recently extended the postcode search facility for entering addresses to include England and Wales as well as Scotland.

Over 200 firms have already opted-in to use RLP, and we’re now making it available to all without the need to specifically request access. From 1st November, anyone in your organisation who has permissions for online registration forms and digital submission will be able to access RLP via a link on the Online Services home page.

Contact us

For general enquiries or specific questions about an application contact:

Email: customerservices@ros.gov.uk Phone: 0800 169 9391

If there is anything else you would like to bring to my attention during this period, please email FAO Jennifer Henderson: rossecretariat@ros.gov.uk.