HM Land Registry made headlines a few days ago with the welcome announcement that fully avoidable requisitions are down 7%. Progress to be celebrated, surely, in a sector that has long grappled with the cost and delay that unnecessary requisitions create.
But look a little closer at the data, and a curious contradiction emerges.
The latest dataset, covering October 2025 to March 2026, shows a fully avoidable requisition rate of 4.9% across 1.6 million applications. The previous dataset, covering April to September 2025, showed a rate of 4.6% across 1.3 million applications. In other words, the published rate has gone up, not down.
So where does the 7% improvement figure come from?
That is a question HMLR has not transparently answered. And it matters, because in the same breath as claiming improvement, Andrew Robertson, head of customer policy at HMLR, advised that “comparisons with previous datasets is not advisable” citing changes in application volumes and registration processes as reasons the numbers shouldn’t be read side by side.
This creates an odd situation. HMLR is claiming a directional improvement down 7%, whilst simultaneously discouraging the very comparison that would allow anyone to verify or challenge that claim.
The volume argument doesn’t hold up particularly well either. HMLR already publishes its avoidable requisition figures as a rate, a percentage of total applications, specifically to control for fluctuations in volume. That is what rates are for. If the rate has risen from 4.6% to 4.9%, the fact that more applications were submitted in the later period does not explain that away.
The “small changes in registration processes” caveat is potentially more legitimate, but only if explained. If something changed in how HMLR categorises or raises requisitions, the sector deserves to know what changed, when, and what the restated historic figures look like on the new basis. A vague disclaimer is not a methodology note.
What makes this particularly striking is the asymmetry at play. HMLR is actively naming firms in a public league table, communicating directly with responsible persons about their requisition rates, and holding the profession to account on this metric, while at the same time discouraging anyone from tracking that same metric over time. Without insight reports available via Lexsure, firms cannot easily evidence improvement, nor can the sector hold HMLR itself to account for systemic progress, if the historical record is effectively placed out of bounds.
None of this is to dismiss the broader initiative. Publishing firm-level data, running training webinars, and engaging responsible persons are all positive steps. The goal of reducing avoidable requisitions, which carry real costs for conveyancers, their clients, and the wider housing market, is unambiguously worthwhile.
But credible performance data requires transparency, consistency, and a methodology that can be independently scrutinised. HMLR would do well to publish a clear explanation of how the 7% figure is derived, and to commit to a stable, comparable baseline going forward so that the next dataset in December can be assessed with confidence, rather than accompanied by another advisory not to look too hard at what came before.
The HMLR avoidable requisitions dataset is publicly available at the Use Land Property Data service. The latest release covers October 2025 to March 2026. The previous data is harder to find.
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