HM Land Registry's 2025-26 Report: Faster Completions, Digital Signatures and £63m Fraud Stopped

What HM Land Registry's Annual Report Actually Measures

HM Land Registry (HMLR) is the government body responsible for registering ownership of land and property in England and Wales. Its Annual Report and Accounts 2025-26, published 15 July 2026, sets out performance against its own service standards for the year, covering how quickly applications are processed, how the organisation is digitising its services, and how it is working with lenders, conveyancers and local authorities to make the wider property market faster and more secure. A "post-completion application" is the step where a change of ownership, a new mortgage, or another update is registered against a property's title after a sale or remortgage has legally completed. A "requisition" is a formal request HMLR sends back to an applicant when an application is incomplete or contains an error, and each requisition adds delay while the applicant responds and the case is requeued. Reducing the number of requisitions, rather than simply processing applications faster once they arrive correctly, is one of the more significant efficiency levers available to HMLR, since an application that is right first time never re-enters the queue at all.

Faster Processing and Fewer Requisitions

The report states that the age of HMLR's oldest outstanding post-completion applications fell to less than half of the level seen in 2023, with the volume of outstanding applications also reduced significantly, and without any stated adverse impact on accuracy. HMLR attributes part of this improvement to a combination of free training for professional customers, live support, and sharing firm-level avoidable requisition data directly with conveyancers and lenders, which helped just under a third of professional customers reduce their own avoidable requisition rates. More than 100,000 fewer requisition letters were issued during the year as a result. Each requisition avoided represents time that would otherwise have been spent by an applicant correcting and resubmitting a case, and time HMLR itself would have spent re-processing it, so the combined effect is faster registration across a large number of transactions rather than a headline figure attached to any single case.

Digital Signatures and the Move Toward Fully Digital Completions

A Qualified Electronic Signature (QES) is a form of electronic signature that meets a higher legal and technical standard than a standard e-signature, involving identity verification and a qualified trust service provider, and is recognised as having the same legal weight as a handwritten signature for the documents it covers. HMLR's adoption of QES reached a milestone during the year when Nationwide Building Society became the first lender to submit a mortgage application using a Qualified Electronic Signature, demonstrating that a fully digital, secure property transaction is now achievable in practice rather than only in principle. This sits alongside HMLR's continued work through the Digital Property Market Steering Group (DPMSG), which brings together government, regulators and industry participants to align on digital identification verification, secure information sharing, and the practical standards needed for other lenders to follow Nationwide's approach.

The Local Land Charges Register: Faster Searches, Lower Costs

A local land charges search is a standard part of buying a property, checking for planning restrictions, conservation area status, road and rail schemes, and other charges registered against the land by the local authority. Historically, these searches were held and processed separately by each of more than 300 local authorities in England, with wide variation in speed and format. HMLR's Local Land Charges Register migrates this data onto a single national digital system, and by March 2026 the service had delivered more than two million search results, saving customers an average of 13 days when obtaining a result compared with the previous local system, and reducing costs by more than £4 million in total. To speed up the migration of individual councils onto the new register, HMLR developed an AI tool that enabled four people to process Newham Council's local land charges data in four weeks, a task that would otherwise have required an estimated three months and 20 people, illustrating the scale of efficiency the digitisation programme is targeting as it extends to the remaining local authorities.

Property Fraud Prevention and the Property Alert Service

Protecting property ownership from fraud remains part of HMLR's core public function alongside its registration work. During 2025-26, HMLR states it helped prevent fraudulent property applications worth more than £63 million. Alongside this, HMLR continued to promote its free Property Alert service, which monitors up to 10 UK properties per account and emails the account holder if certain types of activity, such as an application to change the register, are detected against a monitored title. The service grew to more than 900,000 live accounts during the year. Property Alert is most commonly used by owners of a property they do not live in, such as a buy to let, a property left empty, or a home belonging to an elderly relative, since fraudulent attempts to sell or remortgage a property are harder to notice quickly when the true owner is not resident there.

What This Means for Buyers, Sellers, Landlords and Brokers

Taken together, the changes described in the report point toward shorter and more predictable property transaction timelines rather than any single dramatic change. Fewer requisitions and a lower backlog of outstanding applications mean that registration after completion is less likely to be the slowest part of a chain. Wider adoption of Qualified Electronic Signatures, following Nationwide's example, could in time reduce the need for in-person signing appointments at the mortgage completion stage, though this depends on other lenders adopting the same standard. Digitisation of local land charges searches is already delivering faster results for buyers in areas where the migration has taken place, with further local authorities still to move across. For anyone with a property they do not occupy day to day, registering for the free Property Alert service is a straightforward step regardless of whether a transaction is currently underway. For buyers and remortgagers navigating these processes, understanding how a mortgage broker fits into a faster, increasingly digital completion process remains a relevant question, covered in more depth in the related guides below.

Frequently asked questions

What is HM Land Registry and what does it do?

HM Land Registry is the government body responsible for registering ownership of land and property in England and Wales. It maintains the official register of title, records changes of ownership, mortgages and other legal interests, and provides publicly accessible property information.

What is a requisition and why does it delay a property transaction?

A requisition is a formal request HM Land Registry sends back to an applicant when an application to register a change is incomplete, unclear or contains an error. The application is paused until the applicant responds with the correct information, adding delay before registration can be completed.

What is a Qualified Electronic Signature and is it legally binding for a mortgage?

A Qualified Electronic Signature is a form of electronic signature that meets a defined legal and technical standard, including identity verification through a qualified trust service provider. It carries the same legal weight as a handwritten signature for documents it covers, which is why Nationwide's use of it for a mortgage application is considered a significant step toward fully digital completions.

What is the Local Land Charges Register and why does it matter when buying a home?

The Local Land Charges Register is HM Land Registry's national digital system for local land charges searches, which check for planning restrictions, conservation area status and other charges against a property. As more local authorities migrate onto the national system, search results are being delivered faster and at lower cost than under the previous local, often paper-based, arrangements.

What is the free Property Alert service and who should sign up?

Property Alert is a free HM Land Registry service that monitors up to 10 UK properties per account and emails the account holder if certain activity is detected against a monitored title, such as an application to change the register. It is most useful for owners of a property they do not occupy day to day, such as a rental property or a family member's home, where fraudulent activity might otherwise go unnoticed.