Why I went to Holyrood

Okay, here goes.
When you buy a house in Scotland it likely comes with a “Deed Plan”. A deed plan should be a professionally prepared, measured map showing dimensions, coordinates . and so on. I prepare deed plans regularly as part of the services we provide as land surveyors. They are prepared in such a manner and with so little ambiguity that if the area in question was subject to catastrophic covering by a lava flow a suitably equipped surveyor could yet stake out the original edges from our deed plan data. So far so good.
For formal land registration statute obliges the Keeper to represent the deed plan outline on to the corresponding representation of that area on pre-existing OS digital mapping.
This is where it goes bad.
At this street view level of mapping, the OS is not fit for purpose. Adjacent buildings, roads, walls fences are badly misrepresented. Two neighbouring houses may each be 5 metres out of position in the opposite direction to one another. Despite this, Registers of Scotland staff, will blindly accept the OS representation of events as presented on their computer screen and distort the accurate deed plan data to make it fit the OS map. Under my scrutinising eye I have witnessed a senior plans officer proceed to screw up an entire zone for a land purchase. He moved every edge in error (to make it fit bad OS data) and unwittingly favoured the buyer with about 50% more land than what was agreed and measured on the ground.  
 
I have had confused clients coming to me saying the party fence with the neighbour is in the wrong place, “I should have 5m of garden up to the fence according to the OS based land certificate” (The original deed plan now in a wastepaper basket as it is deemed redundant post registration). I try and explain -and they listen in disbelief- that the OS have both affected properties in the wrong place. Following a detailed survey I convey the reality on the ground both to the client and their solicitor. The client understood quite easily but terrifyingly it is beyond the grasp of the solicitor.
Thus, we have multi layered incompetence. It would be wrong to say all solicitors can’t read drawings but it is a basic skill beyond many.
The remedies for the client are not straight forward or cheap and often the problems come to light just as a property is about to change hands or a construction development is going to start.
 
It actually gets worse. An overnight iterative update to OS mapping may see houses move closer to their real position. You might think that is good. Unfortunately, the legal title remains pinned down in relation to the old position of the house so the building solum may now sit partially out with its legal title and the garden shed, oil tank and septic tank are entirely in the neighbour’s land.
 

Depressingly, there is a lot more to it than what I have quickly outlined here. I thought it warranted a letter to our MSP.
Other so called third world countries can do it. That we don’t is scandalous and it causes folk absolute misery and actually holds back our economy..