Land Registry Offices to Close

From 1 October 2010, the Land Registry Portsmouth, Stevenage and Tunbridge Wells Offices will no longer be proper offices for the receipt of applications. The Land Registration (Proper Office) Order 2010 designates other local Land Registry offices in their place.

During the last week of September there will be an update routine to CASA to reflect these office closures, more details will be circulated nearer the time. This update will close off the records of these offices and reallocate the boroughs that they were dealing with to the new offices. Please make sure that you do apply this update by 1st October.

SDLT Update

You should now have the update to our electronic SDLT form which has created a new category for first time buyers. This change is reflected in question 9 and the new code is 32. If this new code is not available for you to select on the form please contact the support team for your update.

HM Customs and Excise has issued the following guidance note "We have become aware, from a review of our repayment processes, that the default time limit for amending an SDLT return is not always recognized. The purpose of this note is to advise our stakeholders that we are introducing extra checks to help ensure the correct application of the time limit.

Background

FA 2003 Schedule 10 paragraph 6(3) sets out the time limit for amending an SDLT1 return. This is 12 months from the filing date of the return, so 13 months from the effective date of the transaction. After this time it is not possible to amend a return unless it contains a mistake".

There are further changes on the way to the SDLT submission form but these will not be introduced until April of next year, amongst the changes will be a requirement to gather individual's date of births which we currently do in the client I D section. If a company is your client there will also be a requirement to enter the company registration details. These changes together with the change in rate for properties over £1,000,000 will mean an update in the spring of next year.

http://www.easyconvey.com/propertyinformationforms.htm

Photo shows Church Street, Godalming, Surrey.

Maria's CASA Tips:

Backups are essential to protecting the data held in CASA. If you are relying on the backup routine in CASA please remember to delete backups out of the backup folder. it is not necessary to keep more than the current months backups in the folder. Ideally the template and letters folders should also be backed up. We would recommend that the backup folder is placed on a different machine to the one where the CASAdata folder is located. A member of the suppot team will help you set this up if you require this configuration.

If a backup of the server is taking place and the casadata folder is on the server then the data, the letters and template folders should be included. There is no need to take a backup using the CASA routine if the server is being backed up independently.

News from the Support Team:

Many of our documents have been re-designed and have a common theme and look about them. These include the property information and fixtures and fittings forms. We have also produced some new ones including an electronic I D form giving illustrations of the information required to carry out electronic I D checks.

These documents are available to download by following the link at the bottom on the opposite side of the page. Please feel free to edit them to match your own style and contact the support team who will help to copy them into the template folder and create entries in the workflow builder section for the new documents.

News from the Development Team:

The next major update to CASA will take place in October and will contain all of the additional functionality already publicised. This will be followed by improvements to the client I D area in CASA and providing the electronic I D service as a web based option so that all members of the practice can use it.

June 2010.