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

Key messages:

• Winner – Scottish Legal Technology Award
• Our 2020 – 21
• Register Land and Property – request access now
• Changes to digital extracts
• Post registration enquiries
• Future of Conveyancing conference – next steps
• Autumn webinar programme now available

RoS offices remain closed. Registers of Scotland continues to operate in line with Scottish Government guidance and we continue to provide all our services digitally or remotely.

Winner Scottish Legal Technology Award

We are delighted to announce that RoS has won the Scottish Legal Technology Award for our work on the Digital Submission Service.

It is a fantastic achievement and testament to the hard work of everyone across the business during this hugely challenging time.

Thank you to all our customers who supported the (very rapid but nevertheless very thorough) user experience testing for the Digital Submission System. Delivering this system was a true team effort!

Our 2020 – 21

This month we published our 2020-21 Annual Report and Accounts, giving an outline of our key business activities and performance over the past financial year.

Despite beginning 2020-21 in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s report highlights how RoS has adapted in order to continue to deliver for our customers, citizens and the economy.

This includes building digital solutions so that customers could continue to use our services, enabling 95% of colleagues to work remotely and completing over 88% of the almost 600,000 registrations we received within 20 days. We are incredibly pleased that these efforts have seen us increase our customer satisfaction score over the past year from 83% to 90% – our highest ever score.

But, of course, there have been challenges too and due to the pandemic, we haven’t progressed Land Register completion or cleared the arrear at the pace we would have liked. These are areas where we are focusing our efforts for the year ahead.

Register land and property

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

RLP supports dispositions and securities over the whole of a registered title. Very soon you’ll also be able to register plots which form part of an approved development plan (DPA).

Request access now on behalf of your firm.

Our recent webinar had over 150 attendees. Watch the recording on our YouTube, or join us for our next live webinar on 14 October, which will focus on the DPA journey. Find out more and sign up.

Changes to digital extracts

We’re changing the way we provide some of our extracts as we expand our digital offering.

In the coming months digital extracts will be emailed directly to customers, replacing the paper process. These extracts will feature digital seals and a digital certificate to guarantee authenticity, carrying the same legal standing as traditional paper-based extracts.

This change will apply to extracts requested from the following Registers:

• General Register of Sasines
• Land Register of Scotland

More information coming soon.

Post registration enquiries

Got a question on a post registration enquiry or a rectification? Watch our latest webinar as one of our experts takes you through the essentials.

Contact the Post Registration team.

Future of Conveyancing conference – next steps

I recently set out our plans to follow up on the points raised at the Future of Conveyancing conference. In addition to two blogs on the subject we have also had a very productive initial meeting on Qualified Electronic Signatures (QES) with the conveyancing industry.

Watch this space for our next blog update.

If you would like to be involved in the continuing discussions on QES please contact events@ros.gov.uk.

Autumn webinar programme

Our free autumn webinar programme covers a wide range of topics and is now available online for you to book.

For example, how to…

• avoid rejections
• get the best out of ScotLIS
• get back to basics on digital submissions

Find out more and book your place.

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