"Fears over delays to house sales as Land Registry officials vote to stage walkout"
Telegraph: 28th December 2024: Report that government officials at the Land Registry have voted to stage a walkout over new requirements to work from the office for 60% of the week
"...It follows a wave of industrial action at other taxpayer-backed institutions including the Metropolitan Police and the Office for National Statistics, as civil servants demand the right to spend more time working from home...
When the Metropolitan Police workers – who include 999 call handlers and child protection offices – voted to strike earlier this month, the union claimed demands for them to be in the office more would subject them to the “stress of the daily commute”...
The threat of strike action at the Land Registry will raise concerns that it could worsen ongoing delays at the body, which has been accused of delaying house sales and battling backlogs since the pandemic... Official figures show that more than 40pc of cases currently take longer than a month to process, while estimates suggest the non-ministerial department takes more than a year to process applications in 64pc of complex cases.
...When the Land Registry threatened to go on strike in early 2023, the Society of Licensed Conveyancers said it could exacerbate “unacceptable delays” in the system, saying the lengthy wait times were having a “serious impact on conveyancers in both time and money, and in turn can cause delays in the home buying and selling process”.
The vote for strikes at the non-ministerial department follows a push by the Government to get civil servants back into offices for at least 60pc of their contracted hours..."
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