Telford & Wrekin Council request meeting with Business Secretary Sajid Javid over Land Registry plans

The request comes after the recent announcement that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has issued a consultation document relating to the potential privatisation of the Land Registry.

The Land Registry office employs about 300 people at an office in Hall Park Way, Telford.

Chancellor George Osborne has been trying to sell off the agency, which controls all property transactions in England and Wales, for several years.

The coalition government tried to privatise the 150-year-old agency two years ago but a campaign was mounted for continued public ownership.

But now the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills aims to sell it off by 2017.

Councillor Shaun Davies, Telford & Wrekin Council's cabinet member for business, neighbourhood and customer services, has written to the Business Secretary, as well as the two borough MPs, to raise concerns.

He said: "We are concerned to hear the potential threat to these jobs at the Land Registry and the loss of a major and long-standing local employer who is core to a key and growing ICT/digital sector.

"We have been working very hard to improve the borough's economy.

"Any loss of jobs linked to the Land Registry risks causing a talent drain from the borough and a reversal of the recent positive steps the borough and the business community have made in investing in Telford."

Staff at the Telford office have campaigned against plans to sell off the service.

It also leads to the prospect of contracts for the work carried out at Hall Park Way being put up to tender and being moved away from Telford.

In May last year staff from Telford's Land Registry office, based in Hall Park Way, walked out as part of a two-day strike about national plans to sell off the agency and cut jobs.

The agency has been previously valued at around £1.2 billion and made a surplus of £100 million for the public purse in 2012/13.

Under the plans, a private operator would take control of all the main operations of the agency – which registers the ownership of land and property in England and Wales and plays a key role in the property market.

But the Government would retain ownership of the Land Register itself and continue to offer key protections to consumers such as a state-backed guarantee when a loss is incurred as a result of a mistake in the register.