From 21 March, our new land registration application form (LRAF) will come into effect.

As discussed in our previous blog post, the enhanced LRAF will streamline the application form and improve flexibility, helping to reduce the likelihood of rejections and improve the user experience. With the live date upon us, here we’ll cover again what’s changing, as well as highlighting the usability improvements we’ve made.

How we’re implementing the changes

From 21 March, when you enter our eForms service you’ll automatically access the updated version of the form. The changes in the form, including ‘before’ and ‘after’ visuals, can be found in our previous blog post.

The guidance on our Knowledge Base has been updated too. There you’ll find detailed information not only on the new sections of the form and how to complete them, but on the rest of the application form process too. We’ve made some usability improvements here; the information is clearly displayed, with collapsible subsections and linking functionality throughout improving the user journey.

Don’t forget, we’re holding a three month transition period following 21 March. This means we’ll continue to accept the old version of the form during this time – this is to accommodate our customers who have ‘work in progress’ applications.

For these draft applications that have been saved but not submitted prior to 21 March, you’ll be prompted to re-answer the Servitudes and Burdens sections, and the new version of the form will be generated on submission. If your application is for title transfers over unregistered land (known as First Registrations), you’ll also be prompted to re-answer the questions in the new Title Information section. For other application types, the question will be removed.

Other important information

We’ve made these changes to the LRAF process to streamline the form and ultimately reduce the likelihood of rejections. We want to support our customers through this change; with that in mind, we’ve created the new form to accommodate additional information unique to each application.

We’ve also been hard at work internally to understand how our customers will use the new form, and handle potential questions that might arise. For example, only FR applications see the Title Information question in the new form, but what if a full investigation of the title in question hasn’t already been carried out? In instances like this, the details should be noted in the ‘further information’ section.

For questions like this or more information on the changes, be sure to view the guidance provided in the previous blog discussed above, or visit the Knowledge Base. You can also contact your RoS account manager.

Find out more!

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