HM Land Registry says it will play a leading role in the property industry’s digital land registry adoption, which will also cut its own backlog by speeding up its services.

The body has launched a new strategy, called Strategy 2022+, and a three-year business plan to 2025, which lays out the “next stage of its digital transformation” and “sets out a clear roadmap for delivering service improvements”.

The government department says by March 2025, around 98% of its services will be automated – compared with around 90% today – cutting processing times to 15 days on average across registry updates and new applications.

It adds that it will oversee “significant investment” to automate most changes to the land register by 2025, which will result in the end-to-end automation of up to 70% of all updates to its register. This will mean that automated applications will be completed within one day – many of them in seconds.

The department says that over the next three years, it will invest 75% of its budget in improving the speed of services, adding that its budget settlement from the 2021 Comprehensive Spending Review “ensures we have the financial backing from HM Treasury to invest in our people and digital transformation”.

It adds that it also intends to take on “a convening role” as regards digital land registration and will work with the UK property sector “to create a simpler, paperless and transparent process for buying and selling property which will benefit homeowners across the country”.

It says its commitment to complete a new instant-access local land charges register within the next four years is expected to add around £3bn to the UK economy.

The department plans to make more of its information available to better support the property market.

The body says its new strategy is backed by a range of industry groups, including the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, UK Finance, the Conveyancing Association and the Law Society.

HM Land Registry chief executive and chief land registrar Simon Hayes says: “Strategy 2022+ comes at a pivotal moment. The very high level of activity in the property market in recent times has underlined the urgency with which all players in the market need to work together to improve the system.

“With property transactions taking record time to complete, it is imperative that we work as partners to innovate and remove friction so that the process is as quick and painless as possible.

“For HM Land Registry, that means a step-change in our offering to customers so that they receive an outstanding, fully digital service.”

Business Minister Lord Callanan adds: “Industries across the economy stand ready to seize on the digital revolution and the UK’s world-renowned property market is no different.

“The digitisation proposals in this strategy will help the Land Registry deliver more efficient and user-friendly services, while driving productivity and growth for the sector.”

Conveyancing Association director of delivery Beth Rudolf says: “In the past HM Land Registry’s five-year strategic plans have referenced the move to digital/machine-readable and the creation of notional registers but this time it has already started the process through the delivery of the digital registration service.

“This is very encouraging in an industry where we need to be able to deliver digitally for the consumer and other stakeholders in order to reduce the waste of the extended transaction times and fall-through rates, and to enable the consumer to understand the implications of the title on their intended use and enjoyment to reduce claims and therefore PII premiums.”