HM Land Registry releases avoidable requisitions data

HM Land Registry has published its third dataset on avoidable requisitions, covering applications from 1 April to 30 September 2026. If that phrase sounds technical, the basic idea is simple: a requisition is HM Land Registry coming back to ask for more information before it can finish registering a property change. For you, this matters because every extra question adds time. A registration cannot be completed until the missing detail is sorted, so better applications mean fewer delays and less repeat admin for conveyancers, law firms and the people waiting for paperwork to be finalised.

HM Land Registry says these avoidable points are the kind of problems that usually could have been fixed before submission. The examples it gives are missing identity evidence, names that do not match across documents, unclear plans and missing supporting papers. In other words, this is less about a difficult legal argument and more about checks and evidence being incomplete. **A quick explainer:** one requisition is not always one mistake. A single requisition can contain several separate points, which is why the figures in this release count points rather than individual applications or requisition letters.

The bigger story in HM Land Registry’s analysis is that the numbers have been moving in the right direction for several years. According to the department, annual avoidable requisition points fell from about 839,000 in 2022 to 439,000 in 2025, a drop of 47.7%. One detail worth keeping straight is that this longer trend comes from HM Land Registry’s wider analysis published in October 2026, not simply from placing the three public datasets side by side. That matters because it stops us reading more into this single release than the source itself claims.

HM Land Registry also says the rate fell by 39.1% once application volumes were taken into account. That is an important check. It tells us the improvement was not only caused by there being fewer applications overall; firms were, on average, sending in cleaner applications. The same pattern continued in 2026. Between January and September, HM Land Registry says there were about 94 avoidable points for every 1,000 applications, which is an 11% fall in the rate compared with 2025.

This is where the figures need careful reading. A rate of 94 points per 1,000 applications does not mean 9.4% of applications received an avoidable requisition. One application can attract more than one point, and one requisition letter can include several issues at once. **What this means:** the dataset is best read as a measure of how much preventable rework is entering the system, not as a simple pass-or-fail score for individual firms. That makes it more useful for spotting patterns and deciding where training or quality checks should happen first.

HM Land Registry says missing or unclear information is now the most common broad category behind avoidable requisitions, while the single most common individual point is identity evidence not being supplied. That may sound like dry office detail, but it helps explain why delays can feel so frustrating: often the blockage is not a dramatic legal obstacle, but a routine document check that was missed earlier. Andrew Robertson, HM Land Registry’s Head of Customer Policy, describes the progress as a shared achievement involving conveyancers, post-completion teams, industry bodies and the department itself. His message is practical rather than celebratory: use the data, find the recurring errors and focus checking and training where they will make the biggest difference.

The latest release is aimed squarely at firms, and HM Land Registry says it has emailed each firm’s Responsible Person with more detailed information about the requisition points that firm has received. It is also pointing people towards its free guidance, workshops, training hub and the resource called Tackling avoidable requisitions. For readers outside the property world, the lesson is broader. Administrative systems work fastest when the information going in is clear, complete and checked properly first time. This dataset is really a window into that everyday truth: small paperwork errors can ripple out into long waits, extra cost and a lot of avoidable stress.