Mike Hancock News
Mike fights land registry job losses
Mike Hancock (Lib Dem - Portsmouth South) is demanding a meeting with the Justice Minister, responsible for the Land Registry over their proposals to close 5 offices in the South East including in Portsmouth in his fight against the closures and to save local jobs. Mike has also backed a parliamentary motion condemning the closures and job losses (EDM 201).
Mike said: "In my opinion the proposals are just plain barking mad. The Land Registry propose to make 1500 staff redundant and then re-hire 594 staff for the retained offices in subsequent years. The whole of the South East will be left without a local office - meaning a long trip to Weymouth or Leicester. It just doesn't make any sense. Even the former Chief Executive of the Land Registry, John Manthorpe has said there is an alternative way forward that would keep the offices open and mean very limited redundancies. I hope that the Government will now reconsider these ill thought out proposals."
Notes Mike's letters to the Justice Minister are enclosed below. EDM 201 is at http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=39741&SESSION=903
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Rt Hon Michael Wills, MP
Minister of State
Department of Justice
102, Petty France
LONDON SW1H 9AJ
OUR REF: MA/LANDREGISTRY
21 January 2010
Dear Minister
I am writing to you about the Land Registry as the Minister responsible and particularly about the current management's proposals to close five of its regional offices including the one in Portsmouth and cut 25% of the workforce - some 1,500 staff. There are many serious concerns that I have about this.
As you may be aware John Manthrope, the former Chief Land Registrar and the Registry's Chief Executive between 1985 and 1996 has produced a response to the Land Registry's proposals called "An Alternative Approach - The Controlled Transformation Plan." In summary, this outlines an approach that keeps the current regional offices and achieves the Registry's objectives "at less cost and less risk to the property and mortgage markets" mainly through "a recruitment freeze, normal staff wastage and voluntary retirements across all its 19 offices." It would cost £13.7 million compared with £186.1 million for the Registry's preferred proposal.
Mr Manthrope estimates that there is a need for 5130 posts compared to the 4500, the Land Registry want to cut the workforce to and the current actual "in post" level of 5701 posts. Mr Manthrope's proposals would see a reduction of 571 posts compared to 1500 posts the current management is proposing. Mr Manthrope says that the land registry's estimates are flawed because they are based on the current depressed level of the market which is likely and indeed does now look, fortunately, as if it is now recovering. He may be right or the Land Registry's current management may be right. But it is stupid to run the risk of having to make redundancies with all the costs of redundancy only to have to hire more people a year or two later with all the costs of recruitment. Of course the staff and trade unions would like to see no redundancies at all but Mr Manthrope's report shows that there is a sensible way forward that would see at worst a very limited number of compulsory redundancies.
I now turn to the issue of closing regional offices. I have to say that firstly it seems that the whole of the South East will be without a regional office under the closure proposals. And if we assume that there is not going to be a regional office in London then that will mean a long trek to places such as Leicester or Weymouth to visit a local office. The South East of England has the biggest population of any Government region. It may that office space and staff costs are (marginally) more expensive in the South East than elsewhere but I and I am sure the population of the region and its MPs are going to take a very dim view if they are going to be denied any Government offices at all from any service locally. We pay our taxes and fees to the Land Registry in this region - indeed rather more than other regions and we should be able to have similar services.
To turn to the specific issue of the Portsmouth office. I think that there may be ways of reducing office costs by looking at partners such as the City Council, the NHS etc. I have no knowledge whether or not anything would be possible but not to explore it is not practising "joined up" thinking which the Government says that it would do. In addition, while trumpeting the virtues of "E-government", the proposals from the current management, only mention home and more flexible working really in passing. These could also reduce office costs. And there may be in general be the opportunity to re-locate to low-cost offices near to the current locations. Again these do not seem to have been explored in any detail and are rather dismissed in a somewhat cursory way in the management's report.
I also note that the Land Registry has achieved 110% increase in productivity over 7 years and fees have been reduced 8 times in recent years. Although there was an increase in 2009, fees are 16.9% the level of 1994. This is all to be welcomed. However it does not help businesses and individuals if fees have increased costs elsewhere due to a less local and personalised service. It may be a higher quality service with more staff offers better value to the Land Registry's customers even at a higher fee. There is also the potential to look at the charging structure.
As you may be aware the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) have said that there is other valuable work that the Land Registry could be doing in addition to its core work of processing land registrations. In particular, it points out that between 30%-50% of land is not registered. There is important work that it could be doing tackling this and improving the Government's knowledge of land use etc. in this country. It is perhaps difficult to put a day to day market "price" on this. But not to have this information as accurately as possible has a cost as it means that Government planning and policy is not as good as it could be. Knowledge of land use in the South East is particularly important given the great pressure there is on land in the region.
We seem therefore to have proposals from the management of the Land Registry that are ill-thought out according to one of its former Chief Executives who has outlined proposals that effectively achieve the same objectives with much less cost - both in money terms and in terms of job losses. It denies a local office for 8 million people in the South East. And there is also important additional work that the Land Registry could be doing. In light of all this, I hope you will look very carefully at the Land Registry's proposals.
Yours sincerely
MIKE HANCOCK CBE MP
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Rt Hon Michael Wills, MP
Minister of State
Department of Justice
102, Petty France
LONDON SW1H 9AJ
OUR REF: MA/LANDREGISTRY/2
24 January 2009
Dear Minister
Further to my letter of the 22nd January about the closure of five regional offices by the Land Registry, I would be grateful if I could meet with you as the minister responsible to discuss the situation. As I said in my previous letter, I think that these proposals are very ill-conceived.
I look forward to hearing from your office.
Best wishes
Yours sincerely
MIKE HANCOCK CBE MP
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