Council land list stalls
- Posted:
- 00:00 26 Jul 2001
- Topics:
- Databases
Plans for online property conveyancing may be derailed by growing concerns over a government project to create a national database of land and property.
The National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) is due to launch in September. It is the foundation for a one-stop shop for online land and property searches, slashing waiting times for property sales in England and Wales.
Currently land and property searches can take between three and six weeks, and poor address and property data costs local government an estimated £600m.
However, only 10% of local authorities have fully connected to the NLPG and local government IT organisations fear that the September deadline for the launch of the service will be too ambitious for many councils.
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The creation of the national database - a joint initiative between local and central government - is at the heart of the drive to deliver services online.
Other national initiatives - including legislation from the Lord Chancellor's Office paving the way for electronic conveyancing - also depend on having a national database land and property.
Socitm, the local government IT managers' group, said it supported the principle of the NLPG but attacked the way the project had been handled. "The first thing we knew was when our chief executives were written to by the Improvement and Development Agency," said Robin Carsberg, president of Socitm. "It's a very ambitious timetable but many well-intentioned authorities may find it hard to meet."
Estate agent's groups are worried about possible delays to the service. "We would be very disappointed at any delay in making land registry available to the public electronically," said Jim Atkins, president of the National Association of Estate Agents.
A separate agency, the National Land and Property Service (NLS) - a partnership between the Land Registry and the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) - will be the be the NLPG's first customer. A handful of private companies will channel information requests electronically to the relevant agency, such as the Land Registry or local authority.
But with the imminent public launch of the NLPG fewer than 10% of more than 400 local authorities in England and Wales are fully online and linked to the national database with the required connection.
Local authorities must create their own local land and property gazetteers before linking to the NLPG. However, local authorities are under no statutory obligation to do this.
"Local authorities are a long way short of creating a local gazetteer, from the evidence I have seen," said a supplier in the addressing market. "There is not much time between now and September for the national gazetteer to be in place."
Local authority IT managers have broadly welcomed the NLPG project and predict that it will reduce the amount of duplicated data and encourage joined-up services between local agencies.
However councils have also expressed concerns about the higher than expected costs and complexity of creating local property gazetteers. Councils have dozens of separate address databases across departments and agencies.
Andrew Larner, head of Information Age Practice and director of the Local Government Information House (LGIH), a subsidiary of IDeA, said that local authorities would make significant cost savings by introducing an address database.
He agreed that there were facing funding challenges in setting up gazetteers and added that LGIH would make a fund of £200m available to cover IT and planning costs.
Larner added that the quality of the address database - based on data standard BS7666 - would be maintained nationally. He said he was confident that the NLPG would be ready for a public launch in September.
