My Lords, I tabled amendments in this group on Monday. Had the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, put down his amendment a day earlier, I would simply have added my name to that because it covers the issues.
My interest in local land registers is very recent—a matter of days. This part of the Bill was drawn to my attention by my council officers and particularly by Richard Townson, the democratic and legal services manager, who gave me a quick tutorial. I am not terribly upset that I did not become an expert in the subject a lot earlier, but needs must. I have a number of questions that the Minister may not be able to answer today, but if he cannot, I would be grateful for a reply in writing. I am aware that I should have made this speech in Grand Committee, but as I said earlier today, I was not available for House of Lords duties at the time.
The national Land Registry deals with the register of title—ownership issues—and does not go beyond that. We are told that it is run extremely efficiently and that is certainly my experience of using it. There are then local land registers that tell you that charges on a
particular parcel of land exist. Those charges may be a requirement to pay money to someone, but most of them nowadays are constraints on the use of the land due to planning decisions or highways decisions.
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The LLC1 search is a simple search to know what is on the local land register. I have a copy of the form—it is a simple one-sided form. That will produce, for example, information that the house in which I live is situated in the Winewall and Cotton Tree conservation area, which is something that you would want to know if you were buying my house, which is not for sale. Then there is a search to which noble Lords have referred that is known—this is a Law Society form—as CON29, and I have a copy of that form. I am tempted to read the whole thing out to prove a point, but that would test the patience of the House even by my standards. The points that the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, made are good examples of what is on the form.
The form starts with planning and building regulation involvement with that property and ends with argon gas, and there is a whole series of things in between. This is a complicated form that requires quite a lot of research. I understand that all the information required for that form is not on the local land register, which is why the second search has to take place. We are told by the LGA that in more than 90% of cases the two requests are made together. In my authority the figure is around 99%, so it is a joint job, but not simple or straightforward.
Schedule 4 provides for local land registers to be replaced by a single national register of local land charges on the grounds of centralisation, efficiency and economies of scale. Those are arguments that we hear many times—sometimes they are true and sometimes they are very untrue. But for each area this will consist of the information already in the local register for that area plus each local land charge that is subsequently registered. The originating authority for a new or amended local land charge or cancellation will in future have a duty to apply to the Chief Land Registrar—the National Land Registry—for its registration on that central register. It seems to a lot of us that that process has not been properly thought out, has not been costed properly and will lead to a lot of difficulties.
As far as the transitional period is concerned, will local authorities be able to continue to set their own charges for this service during the transitional period? What assessment has been made of the additional costs to local authorities for the transfer of records to the national register, because all the records on the existing local registers will have to be transferred to the national register? Some councils still have manual systems, believe it or not. I am told that there are 40 or 50 out of the 350-odd. What assessment has been made of the costs and the process of digitalising these manual records for the authorities that still keep them in dusty files down in the cellar? What is the timescale for the complete transfer to the national system? Has a proper timescale been worked out or is it back-of-the-fag-packet stuff?
As far as the future system is concerned, will the originating local authorities send the new amended or cancelled registrations—all the CON29 stuff and the ordinary registrations—to the Chief Land Registrar to be entered on to the system or will the local authorities have to do it themselves through their computers? Will they put it on directly or will they send it off nationally so that it is put on nationally? I am asking these questions because people are going round from the Land Registry and/or the department talking to local authorities. The local authorities I know about are no wiser when these people have gone round about what they are saying, because they do not really know.
What assessment has been made of the cost to local authorities of having to provide the updated information to the national system or put it on themselves? How will it be different from the present position? If a local authority is simply putting it on its own computer system and in future it has to put it on the national system, what is new?
What will be the future system for CON29 searches? As I have already said, at the moment most are combined with the LLC1 searches. What will be the future system for this? Will the request for CON29 searches be sent to the national system—to the Chief Land Registrar—who will then have to contact each local authority separately or each originating authority separately? If so, who will be responsible for dealing with it? Will it be dealt with nationally or locally? It seems impossible that the system will work unless it is dealt with locally; in that case, what is different from the present system and where is the saving?
Has an assessment been made of the cost to local authorities in the future? Will it be the same? Will it be less than now? Will it perhaps be even more than now because of the additional bureaucratic complications? How will local knowledge be catered for in the new system? One of the very important things about Land Registry searches at the moment is that the people dealing with them are dealing with them every day and they keep in touch with what is happening in planning, in highways and everything else in their local area. They will often say to applicants for a search, “You ought to know about this. You haven’t asked about this, but it’s important and you should know about it”. How will that sort of local knowledge and local information be provided for in a national system?
How will personal search companies fit into the new system? At the moment they go in and relate directly to local authorities. This applies to routine searches and, as I understand it, it applies to searches under the environmental information register system. Has any assessment been made of potential delays due to the fact that national and local bodies will both be involved in the CON29 searches? If there is to be a substantial transfer of work from local to national, will the TUPE regulations apply to the staff who are at the moment involved in the local work? Finally, where the existing service is outsourced, have any of the potential costs involved in ending the contract with the outsourced companies been taken into account? Will the Government compensate local authorities which have to end contracts prematurely if they have to pay compensation?
I know that I have asked a lot of complicated questions. I do not expect the Minister to answer them all today, but I would be very grateful if I could have answers within the next week.