As a part of measures to control and cut costs, five offices will be closed and about 1500 jobs are likely to be cut by the Land registry. The Public and Commercial Services Union has fiercely condemned the shutting down of the offices and the employees being axed, adding that the workers have been shocked to see the agency being reduced to a bare minimum.
The five offices to be closes are in Peterborough, Portsmouth, Croydon, Stevenage and Tunbridge Wells and there is a possibility that the staff in London and Plymouth will also be affected.
According to the Public and Commercial Services Union, 1100 workers would lose their jobs due to the closures and a further 400 stand the risk of their jobs being privatized. One out of every five Land Registry workers will be affected by these measures.
The staff is under dual trouble as privatization has also been a worry in addition to the shutdowns and job cuts. The Union members believe that the services to the public will not be the same as before and are likely to suffer as 1,700 jobs have already been lost.
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Little could be more damaging to the improvement of public services in the UK than the announcement of swingeing job losses at the Land Registry in the week when we are told that bankers are back on bonuses
Having spent forty years in conveyancing I know that the Registry is a fine organisation. From a low point some years ago it has re-invented itself. Fees were cut annually for more than a decade. Promptness has been improved to the point that those dealing with it could only complain about a lack of time to draw breath. Customer satisfaction percentages have reached the dizzy heights of the high nineties. Major innovations such as the ending of paper deeds were introduced seamlessly.
But while it has been improving the way that it provides certainty and clarity for property owners the financial services industry has undermined it by doing the opposite – trading polluted titles. It is this that has caused the property transfer industry to contract and brought crisis to the Registry.
The Government needs to work with its workers to implement efficiency. The message that success in doing so in the public sector does not warrant the protection given to those failing in private organisations is counterproductive in the strictest sense of the word. How can any postal worker now trust that he or she will be treated fairly in return for co-operating over the introduction of service improvements?