The government has unveiled new plans to speed up the buying and selling of homes by digitising information and streamlining data-sharing.
Over the weekend, The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) said that it aims to establish a “fully digitalised home buying and selling process” as part of the government’s plans to deliver 1.5million homes by 2029.
On the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, housing secretary and deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, said that she was still committed to meeting the housing target despite recent data showing that housing completions had fallen in recent months.
A spokesperson for the MHCLG said that the process is currently being hampered by a lack of protocols for accessing, sharing and verifying data, with current information such as building control and highway details being predominantly paper-based or kept in non-machine readable formats.
The MHCLG announced that a 12-week project, with support from the Land Registry, would be carried out to create data rules which would allow information to be shared more easily between all parties involved in a transaction. The Digital Property Market Steering Group, a group of government and sector specialists, will undertake the work.
The MHCLG suggests that digitising the process could result in the availability of key information being instant, and identity checks in particular carried out immediately. It said that making the information more readily available would make it easier for first-time buyers to get on the housing ladder by making surprises less likely further into the buying and selling process.
During the interview, Angela Rayner said: “We are living in a digital age, the house buying process isn’t very digital, it’s very paper-led so what we want to try and do is work with the Land Registry to have more digitalised copies, including digital ID and signatories.”
“We do this a lot with our banks for various things now and therefore we think that we can streamline that process and make it quicker.”
When asked about the government’s ambitious housing target, Rayner admitted that achieving it would be “really difficult”.
When asked whether the target should be reviewed, Rayner replied: “When we looked into government and we saw the trend, [it] was going backwards, so not only were you having to reverse the trend but then push ahead.”
“We felt that it was made even more challenging, but I wasn’t going to give up on the target.”
Rayner said that the several policies announced by the government so far would help them reach the 1.5 million homes target, including the extra funding for the Affordable Homes Programme, requiring councils to identify suitable land for development in their local plans and cutting Right to Buy discounts.
Rayner said: “There’s no excuses to not build those homes that people desperately need. And we mean business on this, because far too many people are not getting those homes. 160,000 children in temporary accommodations.”
“That costs us billions of pounds, but I’m determined that I will meet the 1.5 million homes target. So, we’re tracking where we’re up to. We don’t expect it to change overnight.”
Maria Harris, chair of the Open Property Data Association, said: “This is a significant step forward in the modernisation of the home buying and selling process. The government’s commitment to streamlining transactions through digital property data will help create a more efficient, transparent, and cost-effective system for all, especially consumers.”
“At OPDA, we have long advocated for smart, secure and trusted data to be at the heart of this transformation, and we welcome this recognition of its importance.”
“We are grateful to our members and supporters, particularly those who have worked tirelessly to develop open data standards and demonstrate their value in practice. This progress would not have been possible without their dedication.”
