CoPSO Annual Conferece
31 October 2016
This year’s event was also a celebration of 10 years of the Search Code. James Sherwood-Rogers welcomed a record number of members to the Victory Services Club for a full afternoon programme. He gave a summary of the work CoPSO has been doing this year with Local Authorities and stakeholders and the overall aim of working towards a fair and competitive market for all, information primacy, and the increasing awareness of the Search Code by stakeholders in the 13 years since incorporation.
The first speaker was Kate Davies, Chairman of the PCCB, who gave a little history and background on the people past and present who have been involved over the years. She also mentioned the work now includes regulation of the Invasives Code and welcomed any feedback on the way PCCB currently operates and what members would like to see going forward.
The two PCCB inspectors were next, Lorna started with a Who’s Who quiz on the members of the PCCB Board. Members were also asked to come up with suggestions for a strapline to the PCCB and these will be put forward for the Board to consider at their next meeting. Denis Purshouse ran through the changes to Compliance Notes since last year, including the TPO change that their logo must be displayed on the front page of regulated searches and that information and links must be included in their Ts & Cs and on websites. PCCB has also now received permission for members to display the TPO Consumer Redress logo on their websites. The next Compliance Note to be drafted will be on Mining and a working group is to be set up to discuss this in detail. All Bulletins with details of any changes/updates are available to download from the Resources section of the PCCB website.
We then welcomed Gerard Kerrigan from Pen Test Partners who gave a very interesting presentation on the changes and complexity of cyber crime. It was an amazing insight into the high level of hacking that has been in the news this year and, after scaring all those present, gave some useful tips on what to do to help prevent email and password hacking.
Gerard was followed by Graham Farrant, CEO at the Land Registry, who updated everyone on their current priorities, the scale of change for Local Land Charges and the timeline starting with full business case approval in November 2017 to programme end in 2023.
Our final speaker was Nick Carey from Ordnance Survey with details of the work they are doing today, the move from maps to data to improve accuracy, quality, quantity and faster operations. He also mentioned the OS Partner Advisory Council who will be an elected group of OS Partners to share insight and help shape future initiatives. Nominations have now closed and the successful candidates will be notified on 24th November.
The discussions went on into the evening with a dinner where we were joined by special guests, Baroness Hayter, Shadow Consumer Affairs Minister and past PCCB Chairmen - Fiona Hoyle and Andrew McIlwraith. Entertainment was provided by magician, Paul Martin, who mesmerised all with his performance.
We would like to thank TM Group for sponsoring the drinks reception, CLS for the conference and FCI for the entertainment.
Our speakers have kindly agreed to make their presentations available to download and they are available by logging in and clicking on the ‘Resources’ tab of the PCCB website.
