Two years ago Sheenagh Adams walked into the managing director’s office at Registers of Scotland to begin her reign. In that short time she has instigated the most significant programme of change in its history. The Firm met her to hear her vision for the future.

---

When you pass through the doors of the Meadowbank House HQ of Registers of Scotland you are left in no doubt as to how important the work that takes place inside this building is. On your left is a manned security desk and opposite there is an illuminated sign telling you the UK’s current threat level. All visitors are closely scrutinised and signed into the building.

Speaking in her fifth floor office Registers of Scotland Managing Director Sheenagh Adams reinforces the importance of the work conducted within the building, which is home to 1,000 of the Registers 1,400 staff.

“Fundamentally, through the work we do here we are supporting the economy of Scotland,” says Adams. “If we did not have a well managed system of guaranteed titles of land, the Scottish economy would collapse and that is no exaggeration. The Keeper of the Register, Jim Meldrew, was recently in Albania where they don’t really have any land registry of note and they are finding it almost impossible to attract inward investment because nobody really knows who owns what. So, our fundamental job here is to underpin the economy through making information available about who owns what and giving certainty to who owns what and make sure there are no fraudulent transactions taking place.”

It is almost two years since Adams gave up her post as Policy Director at Historic Scotland to become Managing Director at Registers of Scotland.

With some 20 years experience of the Scottish civil service, the public sector and local government Adams was perhaps the obvious choice to be the person to steer Registers of Scotland through the most significant period of development in its very long and proud history.

When she took on the job in April 2006, Adams had a number of aims: “Initially I wanted to look at the corporate governance of Registers of Scotland. At that time we had a management board chaired by the Keeper that had no non-executive directors on it. It is considered good practice to have non-execs who can support and challenge your board, so we had a review and restructured at board level and we appointed three non-executive directors, one being Ian Moffet of Anderson Strathern who represents the legal profession for us.”

On arrival at Registers Adams also got stuck into the organisation’s corporate plan to look at ways she could improve the organisation’s services to the varied range of customers it serves on a daily basis.

She said: “Because of the sheer increase in the volume of work we have to do in recent years we do have a legacy of cases that we have not been able to deal with as quickly as we would have liked. Because of the kind of staff we need to deal with these more complicated cases we need staff who have had lots of training and gained the necessary skills and experience. That can only happen over time. So in that respect we are little bit like a huge oil tanker – we can move, but it will take a little while. We want to improve our turnaround times for new registration work coming in, but we also want to continue to offer a very high quality product and maintain our high accurancy rates.”

Customer service is also a key area for Adams and she has invested a substantial amount of money in new systems and processes that will mean customers can access the information held more readily. Obviously the move to more electronic registrations and Registers of Scotland flagship project of ARTL is one way in which the organisation is improving its service through new technology.

A Keeper of the Register may have been around since Medieval times, but the organisation is certainly not slow at embracing new technology as Adams explains: “We are a very historic organisation yet we were one of the first parts of government in Scotland to use I.T. on a wide scale. We have actually been using computerised systems since the Eighties when most parts of the public sector and even the private sector were not using it. So, we have often been at the leading edge of I.T. Now, as most of our customers have quite complex case management systems it is important for us to develop systems that link with their systems. That is and will remain a challenge for us as we continue to move forward.”

Adams and her management board are driving towards a goal of 2012 by which time they aim to have no cases older than six months on their books.

Four years down the line Adams would also like to see the organisation offering even better information systems and she also wants to see more information accessible through the Registers website.

Adams is also about to launch a recruitment programme, so that when 2012 arrives she has a team in place that can deliver on the organisation’s promises. As she concludes, this is just the beginning of an exciting time for Registers: “We are committed to providing a good service and to do that we need to work with the legal profession. We need to understand the profession’s needs. We need to share forward thinking about where their business is going and how we can respond to that. I would ask them to be a little patient. We cannot always deliver as quickly as we would like, but we aim to get it right and protect their interests in the way they do business and how they provide a quality service themselves.”