Complaints procedure

If you experience a problem with HM Land Registry's services or procedures, please get in touch.


If you feel unhappy with the way in which we have dealt with you, we want you to let us know so that we can put matters right, if we can. If we have got something wrong, your feedback will also give us a chance to try to improve our service for all our customers.

How to complain

Contact the team you have been dealing with at HM Land Registry. Alternatively, use our online feedback form.

We will:

  • acknowledge your complaint within 24 hours
  • review and respond to your complaint within 20 working days under Stage 1 and Stage 2 of our internal complaints procedures

If you’re still not satisfied

You can ask the person who responded to your complaint to escalate it to the next stage of our complaints procedure. The complaint will be escalated to an appropriate person.

Stage 2 will be the final stage of our internal complaint stages. Depending on the nature of the complaint, our Stage 2 response may come from a Land Registrar, the Operations Manager, the relevant line manager, or some other senior officer. A Land Registrar’s decision is final and can only be challenged in court.

Our Chief Executive and Chief Land Registrar has no direct role in our complaints procedure. The power and responsibility to deal with registration decisions are delegated to the Land Registrar at each office.

Independent Complaints Reviewer

If your complaint has been through our internal complaints procedure and you are still not satisfied, you can contact the Independent Complaints Reviewer (ICR) for HM Land Registry. The ICR’s role is to review complaints independently from HM Land Registry.

The ICR will only consider complaints about:

The ICR has no power to review or overturn any of our decisions about land registration issues, or to comment on points of law.

If you’re not satisfied with the ICR investigation outcome, you can ask your MP to refer the complaint to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.

Data service complaints

If your complaint is about information supplied by our Commercial Services or supplied free under the Government’s open data initiative and we have given a final response, as well as contacting the ICR, you can also contact the Information Commissioner’s Office, who considers complaints relating to breaches of the Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations 2015.

Our final response will advise who to contact, should you wish to take your complaint further.

Local Land Charges complaints

HM Land Registry is in the process of taking statutory responsibility for the Local Land Charges Register, beginning in the summer of 2018. This is happening in stages as the registers maintained by individual local authorities are transferred to HM Land Registry. You can find out whether HM Land Registry has taken responsibility for a particular local authority area.

If your complaint is about local land charges in an area that is HM Land Registry’s responsibility, please use our online feedback form. We will follow a two stage internal complaints procedure. If your complaint has already been through our internal complaints procedure and you are still not satisfied, we will advise you about the next stage. This will depend on the nature of the complaint.

We will not be able to consider complaints about documents relating to charges that have been provided by local authorities, as they retain responsibility for them. Also, CON 29 enquiries and complaints are outside of the scope of the Local Land Charges Register maintained by HM Land Registry.

So if your complaint is about any of these matters or about local land charges in an area that is not yet HM Land Registry’s responsibility, you should contact the relevant local authority. If you remain dissatisfied with the response from the local authority, you can approach the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman and ask them to look at your concerns.

If your complaint is about information supplied under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 and has already been through our internal complaints procedure and you are still not satisfied, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Action through court

If your grievance cannot be resolved through our complaints procedure and you are considering court action, you should: