A local authority search insurance covers the householder for the duration they live in that property. With an official local authority search you receive ALL information about that property. Fine – search companies dont wish to pay for some information and are STILL using their own made up insurance to get out of paying for data – which is now illegal to do. Good luck to the householder who buys their property and information is missing – or answered, as a guess.

I have lost track of how many solicitors ring my local authority and ask Land Charges staff to verify the contents of a personal search – because it has errors in it and doesnt match the official search done by the other side.

Give it a few months – and the facts will speak for themselves in the world of Land Charges and search companies.

On a final point – local authorities do not speak so rudely about search companies. Certainly not in the public domain! The same cannot be said of ‘professional’ search companies.

The truth will prevail in the end and with the assistance of other professional organisations – the facts will soon speak for themselves and Steve will be eating his words.

One agent said their company instructed its agents to only inspect the usual public registers as their “database” has all the remaining Con29 answers. I disagree.

The file contains conpulsory purchase orders which are NOT Local Land Charges and are not held on a public register. The CPO information was comprehensively covered by the guidance sent to each company.

LAs aren’t perfect but from my experience they clearly provide a better search product.

Have you asked the 7 agents you mention why they never request the information?

From our experience the age of the search and relevance is decided upon by the buyers conveyancer/solicitor and as far as am aware there is no period currently set out.

The file that you mention what is it specifically and are search agents aware of it.

With regard to HIPs, if it contains a personal search or local authority official search that is 2, 3, 4 or more months old, it must be refreshed or redone.

Before HIPs solicitors requested a search a few weeks before completion to ensure that the search contained the most uptodate land charge registrations and con29 search answers. A lot can change in a few months – planning enforcement cases, financial charges, and health notices issued.

@ Melanie Hopefully we will receive some views from local authorities on their thoughts towards the points Mr Davies has expressed.

We will be emailing various LAs to give them the opportunity for them to make a response.

Another excellent interview, it really is good to get opinions and answers like this, keep up the good work.

Bit suprised LAs are acting unlawfully/anti competitive. What is making them do this?