E-Conveyancing

The Land Registry has been planning on restructuring the process of conveyancing for a number of years now. By developing an electronic system of conveyancing the Land Registry aims to make it faster, easier and more secure than its paper equivalent. The Land Registry Act 2002 laid down the legislative foundations for the transformation of the buying and selling of property in England and Wales into a paperless system. The bringing in of the electronic system is to be phased and by 2010 it is hoped that e-conveyancing will be functional for use by the general public, conveyancing practitioners and all other parties involved in the process.

The key ideas behind e-conveyancing are that it is to be paperless, there is to be no time lag between completion and registration and this will allow for 'chain transparency'. This is to be achieved in a number of ways. There will be network access agreements for users to sign up to and submit their electronic documents online.