WIREDGOV

HM Land Registry (HMLR) has published its Annual Report and Accounts 2025-2026 , showcasing significant progress made in improving its services for customers, accelerating digital transformation and supporting reforms across the wider property market.

Improved services for customers

Throughout 2025-26, HM Land Registry continued to improve its speed of service for customers, including bringing down the age of its oldest outstanding post-completion applications to less than half of that witnessed in 2023.  The volume of outstanding applications also reduced significantly without any adverse impact on accuracy or integrity.

Through its free training offer, live support, and sharing firm-level avoidable requisition data, HMLR helped just under one third of professional customers to reduce their avoidable requisition rates.  More than 100,000 fewer requisition letters were issued during the year, releasing thousands of hours back into the property system and helping more applications to be completed faster.

Iain Banfield, Interim Chief Executive and Chief Land Registrar, said:

This year, we’ve shown that meaningful change is possible. We have improved performance, reduced delays, embraced new digital technologies and worked with partners across the sector to turn long-standing ambitions for property market reform into practical delivery.

Digital services

HMLR continued to modernise its services through a range of digital developments. Enhancements to its online portal gave customers greater visibility of applications, while new “digital checks” are helping customers to submit higher-quality applications by identifying issues before submission. Designed to help customers get things right first time, these validation checks support faster application processing, reduce avoidable requisitions and cut unnecessary rework across the system.

Another major milestone came with the adoption of Qualified Electronic Signatures (QES). Nationwide Building Society became the first lender to submit a mortgage application using QES, demonstrating that fully digital, highly secure property transactions are now a practical reality.

Faster access to property information

The report also highlights continued progress with the Local Land Charges Register, which is making homebuying more efficient by providing faster access to essential property information. By March 2026, the service had delivered more than two million search results, saved customers an average of 13 days when obtaining a search result and reduced costs by more than £4 million. To accelerate local authority migrations, HMLR developed an AI tool that enabled four people to process Newham Council’s local land charges data in four weeks - compared with an estimated three months and 20 people without it.

Working with partners to reform homebuying and selling

Beyond its own services for customers, HMLR continued working with industry and government partners to modernise the wider property market through the Digital Property Market Steering Group (DPMSG), bringing together government, regulators and industry to support a more digital and data-enabled property market. During the year, work focused on improving access to trusted property information, supporting digital identification verification initiatives, exploring the use of smart property data and testing approaches to secure information sharing across the sector. These developments fully align with HMLR’s ambition to improve the experience of transacting property and help create a simpler, faster and more secure property market.

Keeping property ownership secure

Protecting customers also remains a core part of HMLR’s public role. During the year, it helped prevent fraudulent property applications worth more than £63 million and further promoted its free Property Alert service, which grew to more than 900,000 live accounts.

Investing in people and productivity

The Annual Report also shows how investment in HMLR’s people is helping to improve its services for customers. Over the year, the organisation invested in staff skills and training to increase productivity and deliver faster, more reliable and more customer-focused services. This included award-winning technical training that is helping staff to progress on to more complex casework.

Future priorities

Looking ahead, HMLR will continue to focus on improving its service performance, putting customers first, building modern digital services and supporting housing market reform. HMLR’s Strategy 2025+ affirms its commitment to continue working with others across the sector to build a simpler, faster and more transparent property market.