CoPSO Conference 2022
6 June 2022
The Chairman, James Sherwood-Rogers, welcomed over 60 members to the VSC for the first CoPSO Conference since 2019. He also thanked the exhibitors - UKGlobal, Stewart Title, Thirdfort, HM Land Registry and Navro who were available throughout the day.
He started with the work that went on during the pandemic -
- Involvement with the Home Buying and Selling Group and Government on the safe re-opening of the housing market
- Engagement with (what was then) MHCLG on electronic access to data
- Considerable engagement with local authorities
- The issue of six Guidance notes for CoPSO members on the Government supported schemes available to them during the Covid pandemic
- Working with PCCB on the switch to on-line inspections
- Engagement with over 120 local authorities on specific issues relating to data access, turnaround times and fees
CoPSO has now introduce a new Partner member category and members who have signed up include UKGlobal, Stewart Title, OS and Thirdfort.
James concluded with a look to the future, the impact of consolidation, continuing to challenge local authorities, further digitisation and new technology in the property market.
Up next was PCCB Chief Inspector, Lorna Bown, who gave a summary of the work carried out in the last year and an update on the recent changes to Compliance Notes, which included an interactive Slido session. Lorna then welcomed Charlotte and Lucy, senior adjudicators from The Property Ombudsman who gave an insight into their processes and complaints handling. An interactive session followed reviewing three recent cases and the results awarded.
The next speaker was Donna Ridgway from HM Land Registry who gave a summary of the progress on the LLC digitisation project. There are now 40 LAs migrated out of over 300 and the plan remains to complete the migration by 2025.
Mike Abraham then spoke about the move to digital registration, the use of digital signatures and the differences between QES and CCES. They continue to engage with tech providers and explor and develop CCES practice while testing the feasibility of QES through the pilot.
It was then time for the lunch break, a chance to visit the stands and catch up with faces, old and new.
The first session of the afternoon began with a live Zoom presentation from Dan Salmons of Coadjute. Dan explained all about Blockchain, what it does and what it can do for property data, along with the challenges of the data in the home buying process not widely recorded in a standardised format which makes it difficult to have the required information available available in the home buying process up front.
Rob Hailstone, from the Bold Legal Group followed with his insights into the work of the estate agent/conveyancer forum and demonstration of the Bold Legal Move Directory.
Nick Chapallaz from Geoplace spoke about the development of UPRNs, the unique identifier for every addressable entitly location in the UK and USRNs, the unique identifier for every referenceable street and its location in the UK. The examples of links with other data include EPCs, title number lookup and business use through OS.
Time for a refreshment break before we wecolmed Nigel Walley, representing RLBA, the Residential Logbook Association. He gave a background to the RLBA and explained that the 'logbook' is a digital asset linked to a residential property that grows in depth over time. It can be used to support various property related activities, not just buying and selling.
An interesting Q & A session followed with Nigel, Rob and Nick answering questions from the floor. It was then time for James to wrap up the day, thank Emma and Mike for their hard work in arranging the day, and all the delegates for attending.
