Sixty-five per cent of all land in Scotland now registered

Just under 70,000 addresses have been registered under Keeper Induced Registration (KIR) and, RoS said, “having processed around 800 follow up transactions without difficulty, we’ve proved we can create titles which solicitors and lenders are confident to trade on”.

RoS said it is continuing to support public sector bodies in reaching the 2019 target for registration of all public land through close collaboration and KIR.

It added that voluntary registration remains one of its primary levers for land registration completion and so it is continuing to offer a 25 per cent discount for voluntary registrations through to mid-2019.

As the 2019 deadline looms, public bodies are accelerating their submissions of voluntary registrations. Private landowners are also progressing with voluntary registration; RoS has registered the Balmoral Estate covering almost 20,000 hectares of land and are continuing to work with large landowners such as the Buccleuch Estates and Atholl Estates to complete their programme of voluntary registrations.

Janet Egdell, RoS’ operations director and accountable officer, said: “Our annual report reflects the breadth of the work that was undertaken by RoS in the last financial year. We are really pleased to have reached more customers and in new ways.

“We celebrated the rich history of the sasine register, officially cut the ribbon on our state of the art new working environment at St Vincent Plaza in Glasgow, and launched two major digital services that will make transactions faster and more certain for customers, and will improve transparency about land and property ownership in Scotland.

“The ongoing development of these, and other services demonstrates that we are maintaining the momentum towards becoming a fully digital business by 2020.”

In addition to developing new products and services, we despatched 91 per cent of work within 20 working days and we are focusing on ways to improve on the areas where we were unable to meet our service standards, through new technology and revising our internal processes.

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