Registers of Scotland, Executive Agency (RoS)

“Their partnership style, the manner in which way they worked at all levels within RoS, and with our other partners, ensured we met our commitment of implementing the Land Registration (Scotland) Act 2012 on time and to budget.”

John King, Business Development Director at RoS

Customer Challenge

The Registers of Scotland (RoS) is the non-ministerial government department responsible for compiling and maintaining 17 public registers. These relate to land, property, and other legal documents.

The registers ensure that every property in Scotland is protected for its owners, which in turn enables confident land and property transactions. Such a stable land registration system is recognised by the World Bank as underpinning the Scottish economy.

RoS origins can be traced back to the 13th century, when the first land inventory was housed in Edinburgh Castle.

In February 2014 the RoS management team asked Ubertas to project manage the 2012 Land Act project that required changes to existing core applications, development of new functionality, along with revised business processes.

The 2012 Act followed on from, and developed, the recommendations made by the Scottish Law Commission in their report on land registration published in February 2010.

The 2012 Act put in place a new scheme of land registration. The main purpose of the act was to reform and restate the law on the registration of rights to land in the Land Register of Scotland. The act achieved this by repealing much of the current land registration statute: the Land Registration (Scotland) Act 1979, and the Land Registration (Scotland) Rules 2006 made under that act.

The 2012 Act realigned the law of land registration with property law. It also put on a statutory footing many of the policies and practices the keeper had developed since the introduction of the Land Register in 1981.

Business Solution

Ubertas created, agreed and managed an end-to-end governance and deliver model, along with associated programme and project plans with the all internal teams, as well as the external organisations who were involved in the delivery activity. The scope of the project included:

• Programme and project management;
• Business requirements development, mapping and management;
• Application development and change, using multiple delivery methodologies;
• Application and integration testing;
• Acceptance-into-Service activities.

This complex programme involved numerous delivery parties, and also required the on-boarding of niche business consultants, development resources, and testing analysts. All this activity was manged by Ubertas against a backdrop of tight timescales.

Results and Benefits

The Land Registration (Scotland) Act 2012 came into force on 8 December 2014 following successful completion of all application development and change activity, along with the system testing and acceptance into service activity.

“A successful outcome for this project was achieved through the structured planning, commitment and relentless delivery focus by the Ubertas programme management team which was led by Steven Crowley and John Lacey” says John King.

John King added, “Their partnership style, the manner in which way they worked at all levels within RoS, and with our other partners, ensured we met out commitment of implementing the Land Registration (Scotland) Act 2012 on time and to budget.”