Faster Processing of Land Transactions at the National Land Agency

The National Land Agency (NLA) continues to justify its position of being accorded executive agency status as part of the Government’s Public Sector Modernisation Programme.
For the last two consecutive financial years, 2008/2009 and 2009/2010, the NLA achieved 98 per cent of its performance targets, improving service delivery, while at the same time reducing the turnaround times for its core transactions.
Prior to achieving executive agency status in 2000/2001, it took the agency 70 days to produce a new certificate of title with survey diagram (excluding first registration) and 60 days to produce a title without a diagram.
Ten years later, in the 2009/2010 fiscal year, it is averaging 30 days for the production of new titles with diagram and 20 days for new titles without diagram.
The turnaround time for the processing of land transfers and other endorsements on an existing title, such as notation of death and marriage, change of name, discharge of mortgage and registration of single transfers and single mortgages, have also improved in the 10-year period from 25 days to seven days.
“However, customers have the opportunity of having these transactions completed in 48 hours by using the Express Desk at the Land Titles Division,” informed Adrienne Mullings, Public Relations Officer for the NLA.
Landowners applying for a title with plan should be pleased to learn that their survey plans can be pre-checked and approved within 35 days instead of the 182 days or 26 weeks that obtained prior to the NLA achieving executive agency status.
As it relates to the update of information on the Valuation Roll, the NLA reported that 85,691 updates were completed up to February this year when compared to 16,740 prior to executive agency status.
Persons, who own or are in possession of land, occasionally submit changes to update their information on the Valuation Roll.