Independent Complaints to the Land Registry Annual Report 2001-2002 Part One

Seeking a fair resolution

Independent Complaints Reviewer

Jodi Berg was appointed as the first Independent Complaints Reviewer (ICR) to the Land Registry in 1998. She was re-appointed for a futher term in 2001. Her role is to act as an honest broker in investigating complaints about the Land Registry made by users of its services.

Mrs Berg is a solicitor and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. She is also ICR for the Charity Commission, the National Archives and the Housing Corporation and Independent Case Examiner for the Child Support Agency and the Northern Ireland Social Security Agency.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

Public services are being subjected to greater scrutiny today than ever before. Hardly a day passes without one or another Department of State or Government Agency being in the media spotlight and the subject of general conversation.

The respect and good will of the public is not automatically given to Government bodies; it has to be earned. People rightly expect a great deal from them - a prompt and reliable service, professionalism, courtesy and, not least, a timely and straightforward response if they encounter difficulties.

For four years my office has provided an independent service for the impartial investigation of complaints made about the Land Registry. I have also been able to contribute to the Land Registry's development of its own service by sharing the information that I have gained from the investigation of complaints and from speaking with Agency customers and staff. This is achieved by giving well-earned recognition to good practice and by acting as a catalyst for change where there is evidence of a need for systemic improvement.

Success in this endeavour cannot by achieved by an individual reviewer regardless of their commitment to the task. It relies on a determined effort by the Agency itself to uphold the principles of the review process, both in word and deed. It is one area where the maxim 'no gain without pain' can be said to be apt, for it is not easy to accept criticism, even when it is intended as constructive. However, this is key to the success of the service if it is to be of real value and regarded as worthwhile by customers and staff alike.

All of the complaints that I review have already been investigated within the Land Registry's internal complaint procedures. The small number of complaints that are not resolved can be referred to my office. Our investigations continue to show that the Registry does not always live up to its usual high standards. In these cases, customers have been able to take advantage of the fresh and objective look that we can provide and have welcomed our involvement. Over the last year, I have made a number of recommendations aimed at putting things right for individual customers and at improving Land Registry service for the future. Once again, this year the Registry has accepted all of my recommendations.

The Land Registry's complaint processes have significantly improved over the last four years as the Agency has taken the opportunity to develop clear and robust systems in response to my recommendations and introduced a range of internal customer service initiatives. This year my report reflects upon the good practice that has been developed by the Land Registry and considers how this experience will provide the basis for improving customer service into the future.

Although its customers do not have a choice in the use of its services, the quality and integrity of the work undertaken by the Land Registry is reflected in the high regard in which the Agency is held by the great majority of its customers. In turn, customer expectations are very high and continue to rise. The drive is to make year on year improvements in service delivery in order to meet these expectations. However, as the Land Registry develops its vision for the future, it will face new challenges in matching customer experience with expectations. The work that it has already undertaken to establish a customer-centred culture that underpins operational activities will provide a firm foundation upon which to base new initiatives.

For my office, this year has also marked a turning point. Following my re-appointment as ICR, I have reviewed our own procedures in order to improve upon our service wherever possible. As the number of complaint referrals across the range of our activities has continued to grow, we have welcomed new staff, who have made a significant contribution to our work.

I am pleased to report that, again this year, the quality of our own complaint handling procedures has been recognised by re-accreditation for the prestigious BSI standard. This achievement is a credit to my staff and demonstrates their hard work and commitment to our service. I thank everyone in the team for their unfailing enthusiasm and efforts on behalf of all of our customers.

It is a privilege to be the Independent Complaint Reviewer for the Land Registry. The relationship that my office has with the Agency is open and constructive. The Land Registry Board takes an active lead in promoting customer service and a positive attitude to complaints and to using the information derived from them to benefit future customers. The Solicitor to the Land Registry, Chris West CBE, championed the introduction of the ICR service and subsequently took Board responsibility for liaison with my office.

Mr West retires as Solicitor this year and everyone at the ICR office wishes him well for the future.

Following the enactment of the Land Registration Act 2002, the way is now open to 'change the landscape' of the property market. As the era of electronic conveyancing approaches, the Land Registry faces a new and uncharted operating environment. Customer needs will change and the Registry must be able to respond and, wherever possible, to anticipate these demands. As Independent Complaints Reviewer, I hope to build on the success that we have achieved in the past to ensure that my office is able to meet the needs of today and the challenges of tomorrow.

An independent service

Our mission is to offer a service that is:

The service is managerially independent from the Land Registry and is free to complainants. It aims to provide a fair resolution of complaints for individual Agency customers and to make a difference to the service provided in the future by recommending change and improvement. The office is located in central London but looks at complaints about maladministration across the whole of England and Wales.

Maladministration is a failure to carry out proper procedures or to meet published quality of service standards. This includes, but is not limited to, complaints about:

Our service is available to any customer whose complaint the Registry has investigated, but who remains dissatisfied with its response.

We respond to initial customer contact within 24 hours. We try to find out why the customer is unhappy with the service that they have received from the Land Registry and whether the complaint can be resolved in a way that is faster and more helpful to both the complainant and the Agency. This will usually involve raising the issue with the Land Registry office concerned to see whether there is scope for reaching a settlement. Whilst this is our usual approach, there are a number of cases that cannot be resolved in this way. This might be, for example, because of the complexity of the issues involved or because the client is already dissatisfied with the way in which the Agency has responded to their complaint.

In the event that matters cannot be resolved, the ICR will consider the information provided by the complainant to see whether or not she can investigate the complaint.

We cannot investigate complaints:

If we cannot review a particular complaint, we will explain why to the complainant. In every other case, we will carry out an investigation into all the matters complained about. Our investigation will include a thorough examination of the Land Registry's files and records. It may also include meetings and interviews with the complainant or with members of Registry staff who were involved in handling the case.

The ICR's report will usually be in the form of a letter to the complainant and to the Registry. However, in some cases, the ICR will decide that it is appropriate to prepare a 'formal' report. This is a lengthy and time-consuming process that involves considerable consultation with the complainant and the Registry at different stages of the review.

Where a complaint is upheld, the Land Registry has agreed to implement any recommendations immediately. Recommendations can include:

The ICR can also make systemic recommendations, with a view to improving the Agency's operational processes and procedures.

Customer service

We are committed to providing our customers with a first class service. We welcome and actively encourage comment on the quality of the service we provide. We send surveys to complainants and to Land Registry staff to gather this information. The valuable feedback we receive is analysed and, where possible, acted upon.

The quality of our own complaint procedure has been subjected to independent benchmarking. This year we received re-accreditation for the exacting BSI standard for our complaints management system. We record any expression of dissatisfaction as an internal complaint, whether it is about our findings or the standard of service that we have provided. This accords with best practice in complaints handling.

We welcome this opportunity to learn from our customers about what issues concern them. This year we received 6 internal complaints. All were acknowledged within 24 hours and responded to in full within a target agreed with our customers. In general this was within 3 days, except for one complaint that raised numerous points.

Most people who complain about our service express dissatisfaction with the ICR's decision. The Parliamentary Ombudsman's office describes this kind of concern as a 'comeback' and, in general, these are resolved by a further explanation of why the ICR has reached a particular decision. Nevertheless, the complainant retains the right to ask an MP to refer their complaint to the Parliamentary Ombudsman. Whatever the cause of the complaint, they are all of concern to us and we seek to resolve them by timely apologies, thorough explanations of the reasons for any problems encountered and, wherever possible, taking action to put things right.

Working with the Land Registry

The ICR plays an important role in highlighting systemic weaknesses or failings and encouraging improvement in the Agency's service. This is achieved through:

Reaching out

We actively try to promote our service. We publish information about it in the media and to consumer and advisory organisations (e.g. Citizens Advice Bureaux). We encourage our customers to contact us by phone, in writing or on-line and continue to deal with them in the way that best suits their needs.

Our website describes our service, provides an on-line version of the leaflet we send to complainants and printable versions of the forms we ask them to complete. It also offers links to other complaint handling and Ombudsman services, as well as to national consumer organisations.

It is updated regularly, in accordance with the guidelines issued by the Web Accessibility Initiative (http://www.w3.org/WAI), which promotes the easy use of websites for all members of the public, paying special attention to the specific problems that can be faced by individuals with disabilities.

The ICR attends meetings of stakeholder groups, seminars and conferences to explain our role. We value our membership of the British and Irish Ombudsman Association and the opportunities it gives us to learn from colleagues in similar organisations and to share examples of good practice from our own.

We also hold meetings with the ICR Focus Group twice a year to identify from representatives of our customers whether there are any improvements that we can introduce to help people to access or use our service more easily. In addition, members can discuss areas of Land Registry service that are giving rise to concern. These can range from problems with the Registry's telephone or internet services to the potential cost and training impact of e-conveyancing on small practitioners. The standing invitation to the Land Registry means that the views of Focus Group members can be taken into account by the Agency.

Our commitment to equality

There is no organisation in which the need to demonstrate a commitment to equality is more important than in a service which is dedicated to the independent, fair and impartial investigation of complaints. People rightly expect that these issues will be high on our agenda when establishing criteria for access and service delivery, as well as in other areas of management.

The ICR is committed to providing a complete and impartial service to anyone, regardless of their background or personal situation. We have taken particular care to ensure that our publicity and information material is clear and easy to understand. It is available in several languages that are in common use across England and Wales and also on audio tape.

Our staff are offered the training opportunities available to members of Land Registry staff. In order to raise awareness about equality issues, we have established a collaborative liaison with the Registry's Diversity and Equal Opportunity Division to enable us to share best practice. During this year we have developed an Equal Opportunities questionnaire, which is published on our website.

We wish to monitor trends in the use of our service to see whether particular needs can be met more effectively, either by this office or by the Land Registry.

As yet it is too early to present any results but, from June 2002, we will be sending out a questionnaire to every complainant. We hope to report on the responses we receive in next year's report. In addition, we will be publishing a Race Equality Scheme (in order to meet the best practice requirements for public bodies under the Race Relations Act 1976 (Statutory Duties) Order 2001).

Facts and figures

We received 46 complaint referrals in 2001-2002. This compares with 67 received last year and is a fall to the same number that we received in our first year of operation in 1998-1999. The number of complaints referred to the Agency Case Review Team (the ACRT) has, however, remained consistent over the last two years at 90 and 87 complaints respectively. (The ACRT is the Land Registry Headquarters team charged with carrying out a final review of complaints previously considered by local offices across the country.)

The reduction in our referrals is not easy to explain. It may be a welcome sign that complaints are being resolved internally. On the other hand, if final Registry review is taking longer than previously, this could result in 'a backlog' of cases awaiting eventual referral to the ICR. However, despite an increase in ACRT general workload, our enquiries suggest that complaints are not taking significantly longer to deal with. We will monitor this situation during the course of the coming year.

This year, we have noted a reduction in referrals of long-standing complaints that date back to before the institution of the ICR service. Many of these complaints have been reviewed over our 4 years of operation. This is good news for the Registry and for those people whose complaints had not been resolved over several years, who required the rigour of independent review to bring matters to a close.

The Land Registry recorded the receipt of 3,594 complaints this year, compared with 2,365 in the previous year. In the main, this increase reflects problems that arose with telephone services during the first quarter of the year. In the second half of the year, there were also problems of delay or non-receipt of items sent to customers via the document exchange system. This demonstrates that things can go wrong in any large organisation, regardless of its normal efficiency. The Land Registry has taken steps to address both of these problems. However, it is fair to say that the increase in recorded complaints can also be attributed to better recognition and recording of complaints on the part of Agency staff.

It is noteworthy that all but 87 complaints were resolved at local offices. This excellent achievement is reflected in the response to the Registry's customer service survey in which 97% of people declared themselves satisfied or very satisfied with the Agency's complaints procedure. It is also reflected in the receipt of 2,992 compliments.

This year, as last, the number of complaints referred to the ICR after ACRT review suggests that many people who are prepared to take cases further than the local office are also prepared to go the extra mile and refer cases to our service. With this in mind, last year the ICR recommended a fast-track referral procedure from the District Land Registry direct to independent review. This recommendation was accepted by the Land Registry and was introduced first as a 'pilot' and subsequently across the whole country.

There have only been three complaints authorised for fast-track referral so far. Only one of these has proceeded to referral to the ICR. Whilst these numbers are too low for any firm conclusions to be reached, it seems that offering fast-track referral may be an effective means of bringing some complaints to a conclusion, perhaps by demonstrating the Registry's confidence in the review carried out at District Land Registries. The ICR will be liaising closely with the Registry to ascertain whether the criteria for fast-track referral can be relaxed or whether local offices can be encouraged to use the procedure more regularly for the benefit of both complainants and the Registry.

Complaint referrals

The 46 complaint referrals to the ICR this year incorporated 72 separate allegations of maladministration. Experience of other organisations shows that people often complain about several issues, depending on their level of dissatisfaction with the Agency's service. The small number of issues for each Land Registry case demonstrates that the Registry is handling complaints more quickly and effectively than in the past.

Complaints by service area

No complaints concerning communications services were referred in 2001-2002. Given the increase in complaints that the Registry received about problems that arose with its telephone service, it is pleasing to note that these were resolved internally without people wishing to refer their complaints for independent review.

Complaints by category

Complaints about delay fell by 7%, whereas complaints about practice and procedure rose by 22%. It is to be hoped that the quality of service has not suffered at the expense of speed of turnaround. However, the overall reduction in complaint referrals suggests that they are being handled more effectively and that the Registry resolves all those amenable to settlement. We will monitor these trends during the coming year.

The increase in practice and procedure complaints continues a trend started last year, which saw an increase from 14% to 25%.

Referrals concerning complaints handling, already very low, fell by a further 4%, evidence that the quality of internal complaints handling is still improving.

Complaints in the final category, mainly bias and conspiracy, fell by 10%. This is a welcome indication of the growing confidence in the impartiality and professionalism of Registry staff.

In 2001-2002, there was a decrease in the number of complaints that proceeded to formal review. We investigated 42 allegations of maladministration.

There is a significant drop in the number of complaints found to have some justification. It is welcome evidence that the Land Registry is handling complaints within its internal procedures better. It must also be borne in mind that the ICR will not uphold a complaint, even where it was originally justified, if she considers that the Registry has done everything that could reasonably be expected of it to resolve matters prior to referral to this office.

An alternative interpretation might be that the Registry is now resolving nearly all complaints that are amenable to settlement and therefore we are receiving more cases that cannot be resolved to the complete satisfaction of the complainant.

Speed of service

Once again this year, it has taken us slightly longer than our target to agree a summary of the complaint. However, we consider it worthwhile to achieve mutual agreement of the terms of reference for our review.

The majority of cases are concluded by report letter. On average this was achieved within 21 weeks, well within time targets.

Although we met most of our targets, it can take a considerable length of time to prepare and submit a 'formal' report and the completion of 3 'formal' reports took an average of 58 weeks. This is of concern, even though the figures are distorted by one exceptional, long-running case where the complainant was awaiting the outcome of legal action before taking his complaint further.

We acknowledge that 'justice delayed is justice denied', however, in some instances, it is beyond the control of the ICR team to affect the timeliness of the 'formal' review process. Within this, there are several 'stages' that allow opportunities for comment to both the complainant and the Registry. In itself, this is a lengthy process. However, in practice, things rarely go completely to plan.

Both complainants and the Registry continue to stress that the rigour of our investigation process is of greater value than the time taken. Nevertheless, we will be taking the opportunity in the coming year to review our own procedures. We will consult with the Land Registry, complainants and stakeholders to find ways of concluding cases more quickly, without losing the integrity of our investigation.

Although we upheld fewer complaints in the reporting year, we were pleased that everyone responding to our customer surveys felt that their cases were handled with courtesy and clarity, even if they were not always happy with the outcome.

At the end of the reporting year, we are continuing to investigate 47 complaint referrals.

Financial report

Part 2