Spring is in the air, and at RoS we’ve had a spring in our step this month with some fantastic news and business developments across the organisation.
Meeting with customers and the public
It’s been a month of particularly strong public engagement for RoS, with several of my colleagues giving lectures and presentations to both public and private events. Janet Egdell, our operations director, spoke on innovation heritage at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre, as part of Scotland’s Year of History, Heritage and Archaeology. She talked in depth on the history of RoS, and how our record of innovation is informing the future direction of our organisation.
Elsewhere, RoS were the headline sponsors of this year’s Scottish Paralegal Conference. Paralegals are some of our most important customers and collaborators, so we truly valued the opportunity for such in-depth engagement. RoS’ Kaira Falconer gave an update on our digital transformation, while numerous teams were on hand, such as account management and digital communications, to give detailed explanations on current and upcoming products and services.
We’ve been in the public eye again this month with the release of February’s House Price Index (HPI) statistics. These important figures show a 3.1 per cent increase in average house price for February 2017 compared with the year before, but a decrease of 0.6 per cent compared with January 2017. Further details on the report can be found here.
New digital services
In other business news, we’ve introduced two new digital services to improve how we interact with our users. On our website, you can now find a new customer feedback form. It’s designed to support a wide range of our services, from land register applications to digital discharges. User feedback plays an essential role in the development and improvement of all our customer facing activity, so I’d encourage all our customers to use this facility to keep in touch.
April also saw the launch of our innovative knowledge base. This will replace existing information online relating to land registration guidance. The new application will support this essential service in a much more intuitive and user friendly way, and it’s also a great example of our digital direction moving forward.
Celebrating 400 years
We’re proud to be celebrating 400 years of land registration in Scotland this year, and this month has witnessed some of the first events in recognition of the anniversary. RoS has donated 400 hours to enable staff to volunteer in the local or wider community, and as part of this initiative we planted 400 trees at Balcorrach Wood in East Dunbartonshire. I was there myself to help the other volunteers, and it was a great feeling to give something back to Scotland during this important year for the Registers of Scotland.
Readers of our blog will know we’re holding a charity golf tournament next month on 25 May. Hosted at the Queen’s Course at Gleneagles, all proceeds from the event will benefit MacMillan Cancer Support – don’t miss out on a fantastic day out to benefit a great cause. There are only a couple of spaces left – you can find out more information and details to register your team here.
And finally, our 400th anniversary commemorative artwork was installed in Meadowbank House this month. I’m delighted with the final product – for staff and visitors both public and business, it certainly acts as a striking celebration of four centuries of land registration in Scotland.