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?

Q. Why do agents only purchase the Building Control information but state quite categorically on their searches that “Information Requested from XX Local Authority”. (check any HIPs site to see this). I have produced evidence and sent it to PCCB who were to investigate but nothing has changed on the newer searches being carried out. One of our best personal search companies is an independent company who buys what they should and as our price is not extortionate in any way they obviously still make a comfortable living. Another question should be – Does the customer realise that the information
in their search is incomplete?

A. This is not really a question for IPSA, but for the company concerned, the question reads as though it is directed at one particular search company rather than being an industry wide question and it is not clear whether the company concerned is a member of IPSA. We would be prepared to look at this and consult with the company/s concerned if they are IPSA members. Perhaps the evidence which has been sent to PCCB could be sent to IPSA for further investigation, I would add that a “company who buys what they should” is probably paying “under protest” as the Information Commissioner has given his opinion that virtually all of the information inspected to answer the con29 questions is environmental and should be available to view free of charge, it is therefore likely that these unlawful fees (however reasonable they are) will have to be refunded when the appeal is concluded at either tribunal or high court.

IPSA and the Information Commissioner believe that Authorities should be moving towards electronic dissemination of information as required by European Law, and moving away from their current anti-competitive practices of refusing to allow access to inspect the information and instead answering enquiries on payment of a fee. I could ask – Does the customer realise that his search is costing more because of unlawful Local Authority fees?