progress in this work was made during the year 1969-70. All instruments relating to new lots, sections and subsections are also being registered on cards.
27. Every instrument presented for registration in the Land Office, together with the memorial thereof, is scrutinized prior to its registra- tion. Where any error is discovered in any instrument or memorial, the instrument is 'stopped' and returned for correction to the solicitors certifying the memorial. Of the 58,968 instruments registered in 1969-70, 16,150 (27.4%) were 'stopped' for the correction of a total of 25,631 errors, which fell into the following categories:
Incorrect description of parcels
Omission of dates/Memorial Nos./Chinese characters Incorrect spelling of words/typing errors...
Stopped because of errors found in connected instrument
Incorrect/insufficient description of parties
Authentication of amendments/deletions/additions required
Incorrect/insufficient stamp duty
Incorrect/insufficient information on partition
---
Incorrect/insufficient registration fee
Incorrect/insufficient description of Crown Rent
Incorrect/insufficient description of consideration Incorrect/insufficient description of plan
Incorrect/insufficient execution
6,731
5,899
5,782
2,189
1,710
1,518
312
272
239
233
190
187
...
166
129
74
25,631
Suggestion by Land Office for improvement of instrument Land Officer's consent required for registration of instrument
Total
Searches
28. An essential preliminary to every land transaction is a search in the land registers to ascertain who is registered as the owner of the property and what, if any, incumbrances are registered against it. Under the Land Registration Fees Regulations, a fee of $1 is payable for each record produced, but where more than one hundred records relating to the same subdivided building are produced at the same time the fee is $100. To facilitate the operation of this system, books of one hundred $1 search tickets are available for purchase by solicitors, whose clerks surrender one ticket for each record produced.
29. During the year 79,764 searches were made by members of the public, 17,379 (27.9%) more than the previous year's total, which suggests that there are many more land transactions in the pipeline. The vast majority of these searches were made by solicitors' clerks who
10
: