Landing craft

In response to Roger Arden's letter published earlier this summer (see [2001] Gazette, 7 June, 15), I am supplying an update on the present position regarding Land Registry telephone services - our dedicated service for account-holders.As director of service development at the Land Registry, I apologise to any account-holders who have had difficulty in getting through to the service at peak times of business.Staff in our telephone service centres are working extremely hard to deal with the highest levels of business ever experienced.The following action has been taken to deal with these unprecedented levels of demand:l An additional call centre has been set up, and was opened in August;l State of the art telecoms technology is being installed, which has only recently come onto the market.

This will increase the efficiency of the service.

If testing is successful the new system will be available by the end of October;l 'Real time priority' was introduced on 28 May.

This allows our telephone service account-holders to make official searches from 9am, rather than 11am as previously.

This is already proving successful in spreading the calls over a longer period and avoiding the peak times of 11am to 12am and 3.30pm to 4.30pm.Readers may also be interested in our Land Registry Direct service, which enables customers to obtain the same facilities and services on-line.For further information on Land Registry Direct, tel: 0870 0100299 or visit our Web site at: www.landregistrydirect.gov.uk.Peter Norman, director of service development, HM Land Registry