Land Registry Direct ("LRD") is a wonderful website. In the bad old days before it was available, one had to order official copies by telephone and wait for them to arrive in the post. Thanks to LRD, the whole conveyancing process became much swifter.

Ordering official copies, bankruptcy searches and copy documents such as leases became a matter of clicking a few buttons and most of the time, the results were obtained instantaneously.

This wonderful service is now going to be discontinued from 30th April 2010 and replaced by the new Land Registry Portal.

The new Portal is now live and I have been using it for a few weeks. I must say, my initial concerns were correct in that it is slower than LRD. We seem to be pressing more buttons to obtain the same results and whilst that sounds complacent, in the current environment, speed is everything.

I am hopeful however that this is down to teething problems as on the whole, the system is very similar to LRD. Only time will tell.

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