Attendees:
Tim Minshull (TM) - HMRC SDS Team
Tony Musk (TMu) - HMRC SDS Team
Tim Downes (TD) - HMRC SDS Team
Mark Bevington (MB) - HMRC Stamp Taxes
Andy Graham (AG) - HM Land Registry
Susie Campbell (SC) - Enact
Archie Courage (AC) - SDLT.co.uk
Mark Perry (MP) - DPS Software
Simon Sabel (SS) - Landscape Software
Roger Hancock (RH) - LSSA
Dominic Cullis (DC) - Easy Convey
Ryan Atkinson (RA) - Eclipse Legal System
Kashif Rehman (KR) - Eclipse Legal System
Meeting started at 1.10pm.
DC gave an overview of the e Home buying Forum. There is still no real detail as yet but various meetings were planned and the intention is to issue 'Blueprints' for homebuying. The forum were still trying to establish HMLR intentions and clear direction to aid commerce.
AG advised that a formal statement is due very shortly.
E-homebuying Forum are trying to engage with as many stakeholders as possible. Generally membership numbers were increasing, but could do with more involvement with Estate Agents. If anyone is interested in joining they can register at www.e-homebuyingforum.com.
SS asked if there was an intention to offer exclusive access to one company for the Business Gateway. AG advised that this was not the case. Land Registry is working with Civica and Perot Systems on development of the Business Gateway and LR will make access available to all who meet our security/technical requirements.
TM - Guidance was issued to Developers on 6 November 2008.
TM advised that the Online Service Helpdesk representative was unable to attend due to leave commitments. However, TM would cover the subject of the Live Service in more detail in his SDS Team update.
MB was praised for his excellent support and speedy responses to queries.
Andy Graham advised that the availabliliy of this for Commercial properties would be driven by demand from mortgage lenders. At the moment there is little indication that commercial e-CSF are needed as the volume is expected to be seen on residential properties. The intention is to enable Lenders who need to do Commercial e-CSF to do so.
AG advised that it was not planned to do this.
SS asked what discussions had taken place between HMLR and HMRC regarding the transfer of payments and data. There seemed to be very little information being issued.
AP - MB will get feedback on what discussions are taking place between HMRC-Stamp Duty and HMLR on this issue.
Post meeting note - discussions are planned at policy level in the near future. More information will be sent out as soon as is available.
TM followed up from his earlier comments in point 2.3. Since the problems we had last year the service had been robust.
SS advised that he had received very positive feedback from his customers regarding the auto population of UTRN's in his product and would recommend this feature to other TPVs.
MB advised that these were available to all developers if they wanted to use them.
TD advised that he had hoped to be able to bring more details to this forum but due to the recent bad weather several meetings had been postponed.
For information, the overall strategy is being looked at by John Harrison. This encompasses all online services that HMRC support.
SS thought accreditation was essential for Stamps developers. They needed Accreditation to assure their users that the third party products were at least as good as the HMRC product.
Also, SS understood that HMRC were considering 'pulling out of the market' at some point. As part of that strategy, if and when it occurs, there would need be some sort of Accreditation system in place so HMRC can be confident that third party products can deliver a certain level of service.
AC added that Solicitors wanted assurance that any product they use can complete the forms and validate this successfully. Accreditation was an ideal way of providing this confidence.
TD advised that all these sort of points were being considered by John Harrison as part of his ongoing review. By the time of the next Stamps forum TD will have more information.
TM advised that Dave Hargreaves and TMu would be the dedicated support on SDS Team for developer queries. TM will continue as the Service Manager.
Where a live issue affects more than ten users over a 24 hour period SDS team will escalate these issues to Live rather than the users having to go through the Helpdesk.
This pilot scheme is running from 2 January 2009 and ends at the end of March 2009 when it's effectiveness will be reviewed.
The feeling was that this was a positive move and in view of this new procedure no representation from the OSH was now required.
TM advised that planned downtime would be published on the HMRC website and updated on a rolling basis.
AC advised that planned downtime was not an issue but problems did arise where the outage was unplanned.
TM advised that SDST are now working closely with HMRC - SDLT so when unplanned downtime occurs, that procedures have now been put in place to ensure consistent and timely messages are issued.
There will be a Gateway release on 4 March 2009 but there are no Stamps elements within this. Also, the 'Live' service will be upgraded on 6 April for general HMRC services. Again there are no significant updates for Stamps, but a couple of minor fixes will be included to mirror the fixes in the TPVS release (see below) and Developers may want to do assurance checks for their products.
There were two issues fixed for Stamps in the February TPVS release relating to the Postcode and Timestamp elements. No problems had been reported for these.
TD advised that SDS team were more than to happy to visit Developers and if anyone wanted a liaison visit then they should contact us.
SS gave an update the Working Together group. See document published separately on the Developer Forum Minutes page.
See document published separately on the Developer Forum Minutes page.
AG was interested in a developer view on the problems caused by Firewalls. The general feeling was that there was not a problem with Firewalls themselves but the training and restrictions placed within user environments.
DC advised that he would be able to provide more information on this AP - DC
TM asked if the group felt that we still need quarterly meetings. The feeling was that the service had matured and there was now a need to focus on policy matters and not on problems with the service. Therefore meetings should only be held when there was something to discuss and the main driver for this now is likely to be with regard to HMLR updates.
The next Forum will be held on Tuesday 12 May 2009 - venue to be decided
The meeting closed at 2:45 pm.
