Innovative idea

The United Kingdom's Land Registry processes approximately £1 000 000.00 worth of property every minute - most of this on paper. This is changing fast, with a national roll-out of a central e-conveyancing service planned for 2007. The Land Registry will co-ordinate the service. The service will be linked to a digital passport office that will confirm the identities of signatories to electronic documents. Various service delivery channels will be implemented with larger commercial firms and lenders accessing the system via accredited software systems.

The beauty of the system lies in the ease with which conveyancers will be able to access it. Despite its inherent complexities all it requires from the practitioner are the basic tools of a standard PC, an e-mail address and an Internet connection. Problems, however, do exist. To minimize them, the Registry is taking a pragmatic approach in which lessons learnt from the trial period will be introduced into each succeeding step of the process.

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