Modernising the 1862 Register: headless CMS for HM Land Registry
The register we built for HM Land Registry, re-platformed — a monolithic CMS split into Plone 6.1 Headless with a Next.js frontend, to meet WCAG 2.2 AA without a rebuild.
When a record can't be wrong, off-the-shelf SaaS and generic CMS platforms aren't enough. The registers we've built sit at the centre of regulatory enforcement, citizen safety, professional licensing and statutory compliance — places where every entry needs an audit trail and every change has consequences.
Generic CMS gives you content authoring; generic SaaS gives you forms. Registers need both, plus governance: versioned records, multi-party workflow, integration with legacy address-lookup or identity systems, public-search overlays that respect classification rules. We build on Plone because the platform's permissioning, versioning, and workflow primitives are designed for this kind of work — not because Plone is the only option, but because it removes the need to invent the audit-and-governance layer ourselves.
Registers are public-trust infrastructure. Every register we ship is WCAG 2.1 / 2.2 AA accessible — accessibility isn't a separate phase, it's enforced at the editor and design-system level. Government-grade hosting, security audits, and disaster recovery patterns sit underneath, supplied through our managed-hosting service.

The register we built for HM Land Registry, re-platformed — a monolithic CMS split into Plone 6.1 Headless with a Next.js frontend, to meet WCAG 2.2 AA without a rebuild.

Digitising the register created by the Land Registry Act of 1862 and publishing it as open data — 84,000 scanned images, searchable, hosted to UK government standards.

300,000 backyard pools, 182 local councils, about 30 forms, and two months to build it before registration opened. We run the NSW Swimming Pool Register.

PretaGov worked with the Commission for Children and Young People to develop a workflow system that allowed self-employed working with kids to certified including integration with NSW police for sensitive criminal record background checks.