Day: June 28, 2018

• staff and judicial vacancy adverts in Wales will be bilingual
• programme covers prison, probation, legal and courts services

The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) has today improved the way services will be delivered in the Welsh language.

Approved by the Welsh Language Commissioner the scheme will cover each of the MOJ’s delivery bodies – Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, the Legal Aid Agency, the Office of the Public Guardian, and the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. Each body will adopt their own version of the programme.

The Department will also now advertise vacancies for staff judges and magistrates in Wales bilingually and place adverts in Welsh language publications.

Ministry of Justice Permanent Secretary Richard Heaton said:

This change supports one of our most fundamental aims – making access to justice easier for everyone.

We listened carefully to the feedback from our public consultation and these improvements will allow us to deliver a service that works better for Welsh speakers.

Delivering our services in Welsh

We will deliver Welsh language services to the same quality and consistency as those provided in English, including by:

• responding in Welsh to correspondence received in Welsh within the same timescale as correspondence in English
• ensuring events in Wales are publicised in Welsh and that participants can contribute in Welsh
• publishing Welsh language content on MOJ website

The scheme was developed following a public consultation with feedback from members of the public, businesses and legal professionals.

For more information on the Welsh Language Scheme visit GOV.UK.

In the dataset you can find the date of sale for each property, its full address and sale price, its category (residential or commercial) and type (detached, semi-detached, terraced, flat or maisonette and other), whether it is new build or not and whether it is freehold or leasehold.

The number of sales received for registration by property type and month

Of the 83,429 sales received for registration in May 2018:

• 62,086 were freehold, a 2.4% fall on May 2017
• 11,286 were newly built, a 12.9 % increase on May 2017

There is a time difference between the sale of a property and its registration at HM Land Registry.

Of the 83,429 sales received for registration, 21,349 took place in May 2018 of which:

• 375 were of residential properties in England and Wales for £1 million and over
• 215 were of residential properties in Greater London for £1 million and over
• one was a residential property in Birmingham for more than £1 million
• one was a residential property in Greater Manchester for more than £1 million

The most expensive residential sale taking place in May 2018 was of a detached property in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London for £15,750,000. The cheapest residential sales in May 2018 were of two properties in Rushden, East Northamptonshire for £9,500.

The most expensive commercial sale taking place in May 2018 was in the City of Westminster, London for £92,500,000. The cheapest commercial sale in May 2018 was in Stockport, Greater Manchester for £555.

Access the full dataset.

Notes to editors

1. Price Paid Data is published at 11 am on the 20th working day of each month. The next dataset will be published on Friday 27 July 2018.
2. Price Paid Data is property price data for all residential and commercial property sales in England and Wales that are lodged with HM Land Registry for registration in that month, subject to exclusions.
3. The amount of time between the sale of a property and the registration of this information with HM Land Registry varies. It typically ranges between two weeks and two months. Data for the two most recent months is therefore incomplete and does not give an indication of final monthly volumes. Occasionally the interval between sale and registration is longer than two months. The small number of sales affected cannot be updated for publication until the sales are lodged for registration.
4. Price Paid Data categories are either Category A (Standard entries) which includes single residential properties sold for full market value or Category B (Additional entries) for example sales to a company, buy-to-lets where they can be identified by a mortgage and repossessions.
5. HM Land Registry has been collecting information on Category A sales from January 1995 and on Category B sales from October 2013.
6. Price Paid Data can be downloaded in text, CSV format and in a machine-readable format as linked data and is released under Open Government Licence (OGL). Under the OGL, HM Land Registry permits the use of Price Paid Data for commercial or non-commercial purposes. However, the OGL does not cover the use of third party rights, which HM Land Registry is not authorised to license.
7. The Price Paid Data report builder allows users to build bespoke reports using the data. Reports can be based on location, estate type, price paid or property type over a defined period of time.
8. HM Land Registry’s mission is to guarantee and protect property rights in England and Wales.
9. HM Land Registry is a government department created in 1862. It operates as an executive agency and a trading fund and its running costs are covered by the fees paid by the users of its services. Its ambition is to become the world’s leading land registry for speed, simplicity and an open approach to data.
10. HM Land Registry safeguards land and property ownership worth in excess of £4 trillion, including around £1 trillion of mortgages. The Land Register contains more than 25 million titles showing evidence of ownership for some 85% of the land mass of England and Wales.
11. For further information about HM Land Registry visit www.gov.uk/land-registry.
12. Follow us: Twitter @HMLandRegistry our blog, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Contact

Mr Mohammed Miah and Mrs Anwara Miah, were both directors of Murrayfield Developments Limited (MDL), which was incorporated in 2004 and traded as The Original Raj Hotel in Edinburgh.

From January 2012, Mr and Mrs Miah were joint directors of MDL and the company ceased trading on 19 November 2015 and went into liquidation on 9 December 2015 owing creditors over £260,000.

An investigation by the Insolvency Service, which followed the liquidation, led to a trial.

The court heard that the Insolvency Service investigation found Mr and Mrs Miah failed to preserve or deliver up the accounting records for MDL to the liquidator, as they were required to by insolvency law. This meant it wasn’t possible to account for over £1 million paid out from the company’s bank account, including cheques written to cash after the commencement of winding up proceedings. This was aggravated by the directors’ failure to provide a statement of affairs to the liquidator.

It was also found that Mr and Mrs Miah caused MDL to trade to the detriment of HMRC whilst insolvent from 1 January 2014 to the date of liquidation resulting in a tax debt of at least £228,920.

In the absence of either Mohammed Miah or Anwara Miah at the court hearing, the Sheriff granted a disqualification order against both Mr and Mrs Miah.

The disqualification commenced on 6 March 2018 and is effective until 6 March 2025.

Robert Clarke, Head of Company Investigation at the Insolvency Service said:

Directors have a duty to ensure that their companies maintain proper accounting records, and, following insolvency, deliver them to the office-holder in the interests of fairness and transparency.

Without a full account of transactions it is impossible to determine whether a director has discharged his duties properly, or is using a lack of documentation as a cloak for impropriety.

Notes to editors

Murrayfield Developments Limited (Company number SC262655), was incorporated in 2004.

Mr Mohammed Miah’s date of birth is March 1959. He was appointed as a director of MDL on 30 January 2012 and remained in office until the date of liquidation. Mrs Anwara Miah’s date of birth is June 1960. She was appointed as a director of MDL on 2 February 2004 and remained in office until the date of liquidation.

A disqualification order has the effect that without specific permission of a court, a person with a disqualification cannot:

• act as a director of a company
• take part, directly or indirectly, in the promotion, formation or management of a company or limited liability partnership
• be a receiver of a company’s property

Persons subject to a disqualification order are bound by a range of other restrictions.

The Insolvency Service administers the insolvency regime, investigating all compulsory liquidations and individual insolvencies (bankruptcies) through the Official Receiver to establish why they became insolvent. It may also use powers under the Companies Act 1985 to conduct confidential fact-finding investigations into the activities of live limited companies in the UK. In addition, the agency deals with disqualification of directors in corporate failures, assesses and pays statutory entitlement to redundancy payments when an employer cannot or will not pay employees, provides banking and investment services for bankruptcy and liquidation estate funds and advises ministers and other government departments on insolvency law and practice. Further information about the work of the Insolvency Service, and how to complain about financial misconduct, is available.

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