Offices
Land Registry has 14 offices at: Birkenhead, Coventry, Croydon, Durham, Fylde (Warton), Gloucester, Kingston upon Hull, Leicester, Nottingham, Peterborough, Plymouth, Swansea (covering all of Wales), Telford and Weymouth. There is also a small sub-office of Croydon at Portsmouth, which is due to close in 2013.
Land Registry's Head Office is based in Croydon. The in-house IT department (Information Systems) and Land Charges Departments are based in Plymouth.
In 2006, as a result of a review of office accommodation, Land Registry announced the closure of several offices. This involved merging offices in Birkenhead, Durham, Lytham/Warton, Nottingham and Swansea, and closing of offices in Harrow and York.
A further review of staffing levels and overall office space began in 2009. The economic recession and lower volumes of property sales and mortgages, meant that Land Registry's basic work in connection with remortgages and house sales reduced to the point where it made a financial loss for the first time. The Land Registry announced proposals to close five offices at Portsmouth, Tunbridge Wells, Croydon, Stevenage and Peterborough.
As a result of consultation, the plans to close the Croydon and Peterborough offices were not carried out, but the closure of the other three went ahead, although until 2013 a small office remains at Portsmouth as a sub-office of Croydon.
The Head Office moved out of its famous Lincoln's Inn Fields building in March 2011 and is now based in Croydon. The building has been purchased by the London School of Economics for a sum of £37.5 million. During the early part of 2011 staff based in the Plymouth were relocated to the Information Systems office in Seaton Court.
Read more about this topic: HM Land Registry
Famous quotes containing the word offices:
“If private men are obliged to perform the offices of government, to protect the weak and dispense justice, then the government becomes only a hired man, or clerk, to perform menial or indifferent services.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The dogma of the mystic offices of Christ being dropped, and he standing on his genius as a moral teacher, ‘tis impossible to maintain the old emphasis of his personality; and it recedes, as all persons must, before the sublimity of the moral laws.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“He stood, a soldier, to the last right end,
A perfect patriot and a noble friend,
But most a virtuous son.
All offices were done
By him, so ample, full, and round
In weight in measure, number, sound,
As, though his age imperfect might appear,
His life was of humanity the sphere.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)