During the autumn conveyancers dealing with properties in the areas served by the Coventry, Stevenage and Tunbridge Wells District Land Registries have begun to encounter some unfamiliar land registration forms.

The forms, provisionally known as input documents, are being used during a trial at those three offices instead of the usual forms of discharge, transfer and charge.The trial, which has the support of the Law Society and the Council of Mortgage Lenders, will run at least until the end of March 1995.

Several firms of solicitors and some large mortgage lenders have agreed to take part in the trial.The aim of the exercise is to bring about real improvements in the system of registered conveyancing, in terms of quality and accuracy, while reducing and simplifying the work which is involved for practitioners and lenders in preparing the necessary documentation and applying for registration.Input documents are a series of forms, each of which will, for the purposes of the trial, take the place of one of the existing prescribed forms of disposition (ie discharge, transfer and charge) and of its associated form of application for registration.

The documents have been drawn with the intention of facilitating their completion by conveyancers and their processing by the Land Registry.The combined forms constitute, in each case, the authority for the chief land registrar to make the requested changes on the register.

They are designed to enable Land Registry staff to enter data provided by applicants directly into the registry's computer system and, thus, to eliminate the errors which tend to occur when, as happens with existing conveyancing forms, information has to be transcribed from one document to another.There will be three different input documents, each of them A4-sized and printed on both sides.

The first (form A/B) includes the equivalent of a discharge of a registered charge in form 53 on one side and a form of application for cancellation of the relevant entries on the other.

This contains instructions as to what title is affected, what entries are to be cancelled and where the land certificate is to be sent.

The second document (form C/D) is a combined transfer of whole and the associated application form.

The third (form E/F) is a combined charge of whole and application for registration.All three input documents will be capable of being used on straightforward transfers, charges and discharges affecting the whole of the land in no more than five registered titles.

The forms are designed ultimately to be computer generated but will be available as printed forms for completion in typescript.

Where a multiple application (for example, a discharge of an existing charge, a transfer and a new charge) is involved, only one of the application forms will need to be fully completed.Although the solicitors and lenders who have agreed to take part in the trial have been given detailed guidance on the use of the documents, it is likely that other practitioners may be asked to use them during the trial.

For example, a seller's solicitor dealing with a buyer's solicitor who is taking part in the trial may be asked to approve a draft input document transfer (form C) rather than a conventional transfer in form 19.

Or a borrower's solicitor may be instructed by a participating lender that he or she will, upon redemption of the charge, receive a new form A instead of a form 53, or that he or she should use a charge document (form E) in place of the lender's current standard mortgage form.Once practitioners and their staff become familiar with them, the new forms should be clearer and easier to complete than the existing forms.

Explanatory material on their use will be given by participating lenders to the solicitors they instruct and, in case of difficulties, contact points at the Land Registry offices concerned will be readily available to offer help and advice.Computerisation of the land register has enabled the registry to make real improvements in the pre-contract and pre-completion services which it offers to practitioners, both by telephone and, more recently, on line from the remote terminals of a small community of participants in the Land Registry's direct access pilot study.It will be difficult for comparable advances to be made in the computerised processing of post-completion applications while they continue to depend on documentation which has remained largely unchanged for many years.

In particular, while great progress has been made over recent months in reducing the incidence of minor but annoying errors in land and charge certificates, the Land Registry believes that further significant improvements will require a more radical revision of systems and processes, including conveyancing documentation and application forms.The input documents are intended for use in straightforward conveyancing transactions and the documents have been drawn with this very much in mind.

Practitioners will, therefore, find that there are some instances where the use, in particular, of the transfer in form C will be inappropriate.

In those cases, the conventional form 19, with any necessary additions and amendments, will continue to be used and a new form of application for registration (form G) will take the place of the present form A4.The Land Registry has received a great deal of assistance and advice in devising the input documents from the Law Society and the Council of Mortgage Lenders, as well as from a number of individual solicitors and lending institutions.

I am extremely grateful for all this help; I should like also to thank practitioners in advance for their co-operation in the trial.

The registry, for its part, undertakes to consider fully the views of all those who participate, either directly or indirectly, in the trial.For further information about the trial or the input documents contact Chris West, the solicitor to HM Land Registry, at 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PH; tel 071-917 8888