LAND & DEEDS REGISTRY.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1924, 5 December 1913, Page 3

LAND & DEEDS REGISTRY.

The conference of the District Land Registrars, held in Wellington last week, brings into notice a department of the Public Service which does int often attract attention. Its work is outside tho range of politics, and its relations with the general public are conducted chiefly through the medium of the legal profession. Persons having transactions in land usually hand them over to their lawyers and do not concern themselves much with the technical details- When it is considered, however, that, according to the last annual return, the transfers of land under the Land Transfer Act represented :| value of over 17 millions sterling, and the mortgages of over 18 million's for the 12 months, and that the total amount secured on mortgage of land under the Act is over 0" millions, and that tho land is held under title guaranteed by the Land Transfer' Assurance Fund, which means practically the State, and further that none- of it can be sold, leased, or mortgaged without tho intervention of the Land Registry Officers,it will be understood that the responsibilities undertaken by the Department aro by no moans light.

In common' with other Departments it loses something in efficiency of administration from having to maintain its work in cl>:ven separate districts. Anyone who has seen the large handsome buildings in which the Land Titles Offices are housed in Melbourne and Sydney, and the high standard of organisation and efficiency which is found possible owing to the work for the whole State being centred in one office, cannot fail to observe the great disadvantage to our own Department of the decentralisation necessarily obtaining in tho Dominion. The Land Transfer system, however, was inaugurated in tho days of Provincial Governments when each province expected to have a local branch of every department. A correspondent points out that the districts wore also arranged to correspond with tho already existing Deeds Registration districts, and under all tho conditions district offices may have been necessary. ■It would, he says, be difficult now to reduce the number, hut tho demands that are sometimes made for the creation of new. districts ought certainiy to be resisted. With so many registrars, each invested- with full powers under the Land Transfer Act in his own district, it is not surprising that diversity of practice has sometimes resulted. This can only be got over by conferences such as that just hold at which views can be exchanged and general principles discussed and agreed upon. It was undoubtedly a wise recommendation of the Public Service Commissioner, in his general report 011 the Service, adds our correspondent, that steps should- be taken whereby the principal officers of the Departments would be called together from time to time for the purpose, of reviewing their internal routine and practice.