Joe Douglass discusses HM Land Registry’s collaboration with IQ Legal Training to reduce requisitions caused by restrictions, offering guidance, tips, and training to help conveyancers submit accurate applications. 

On 5 December, the Customer Training Team from HM Land Registry (HMLR) featured as guests on IQ Legal Training’s restrictions webinar.  

As a team, we’re focused on working together to help conveyancers submit correct and complete applications that make registration faster and easier. This was a great opportunity to support conveyancers in navigating the intricacies of dealing with restrictions from HMLR’s perspective.  

Restrictions are the number one cause of HMLR requisitions. In the past 12 months, HMLR raised more than 200,000 requisitions on restriction points. 

It’s widely recognised that requisitions take up your time and ours, clog up our respective systems and lead to delays in processing applications. Ultimately, they negatively affect our service to you and your service to your clients. We are intent on reducing the number of requisitions we send – along with greater consistency in raising them.   

During the webinar, IQ Legal Training’s founder, Ian Quayle, gave an extensive insight into the key case law surrounding restrictions, while HMLR’s trainers provided essential guidance on compliance, making the correct application in each case and how to deal with problematic restrictions.  

We followed this up with a question-and-answer session, where attendees had time to pose queries to Ian, the Customer Training team and two senior HMLR caseworkers. 

With over 300 attendees, and resoundingly positive feedback the webinar proved a huge success. There is clearly appetite for further training events of this kind, so watch this space, as we intend to speak at a number of IQ Legal webinars in the new year. If you want to be the first to know about our next workshop, join our mailing list. They do fill up very quickly, so don’t miss out!  

For anyone who could not attend the webinar, we’d like to share some top tips to help ensure your applications are complete and correct when it comes to dealing with restrictions. Here goes: 

Restriction Top Tips 

• Be clear about which types of disposition a restriction catches; 

• Use a standard form of restriction wherever possible. They are worded in a clear manner so anyone who inspects the register can determine whether an application will be caught by the terms of the restriction, and they do cover most situations;  

• Apply for a standard form of restriction using one of our prescribed forms (transfer, assent, charge), LR13 of a prescribed clause lease or Form RX1; 

• If you do apply for a non-standard restriction, you must always use form RX1 and pay the additional fee(s), charged per restriction and per title; 

• Read the wording of a restriction carefully to check if it catches your disposition, and provide us with the right evidence from the correct party; 

• Consider using Form RXC for restriction compliance. The form will help you provide consents or certificates that meet HM Land Registry requirements at the first time of asking; 

• Make sure you complete panel 10 of form TR1, or similar panels on other forms to avoid unnecessary work. If this is blank or unclear we will enter a Form A restriction by default which may not actually be required; and 

• See Practice Guide 19 and 19a for comprehensive information on restrictions. You can find specific standard form restriction wording in Appendix B to Practice Guide 19. 

Aside from our guidance on restrictions we have created a range of training materials to help you use HM Land Registry services and submit complete and correct applications.  

All of these are free and can be accessed via our Training hub on GOV.UK. Use the link below to access the Training hub or simply search online for ‘land registry training’ and ensure you select the GOV.UK link.  

HM Land Registry training hub – GOV.UK 

The hub provides links to all of our training materials, including topic-specific guidance pages, webinars, videos, podcasts, flowcharts and checklists.
 

New to conveyancing or in need of a refresher? Our self-service training package HM Land Registry Essentials will help you with the basics, accessible from the training hub.  

And finally, we all know the frustration of requisitions and the benefits of correct and complete applications, which lead to faster, smoother applications. With free support from HMLR in live events and the training hub, why not sign up to our mailing list and enjoy the benefits of working together to save everyone time and money.