Local Authority Searches

Badgerette27

Waiting on the local authority search for our purchase.

I have looked online and our local council says their turnaround is 3 days from receiving the search.

Our solicitor (Runnett & Co paneled by Countrywide) advised us the search was due back on the 15th, 10 days after they submitted it.

Now they are saying it is due on the 20th!!

When i asked why, they said that they HAD to use the Countrywide search company and couldn't go direct.

i have asked them to chase this up and have said we will pay for a direct search if this will help speed matters up.

Is this standard practice? Any insight or personal experiences would help.

Thank you.

TeamLowe

There's two ways that the local searches are done:
1) an application is submitted to the Land Charges team at the Council and relevant fee paid, with whatever turnaround the Council say.
2) you can pay someone to go down to the Council offices and physically check the records themselves, think it's referred to as a third party agency search or something similar. So your solicitors will pay a company to send somebody down to the offices to check the records

it sounds like it's method 2 they're using (I have my suspicions that's there's little or no fee from the Council for this so a profit to be made) so the delay will be that it depends on when the actual person goes down to the Council.
In our case, when i chased it with the Council they said no application had been submitted to them but somebody had been down the day before to check the records. think this was about 10 working days after they said the local searches request was submitted

TeamLowe

just found the email from my local authority about it...

An agent from a Personal Search Agency visited the [relevant civic building] a Personal Search. We
forward a Snapshot extract of what is on the LLC Register for the particular property to [relevant civic building staff] who print it out for the Agent.
While there the Agent picks up other information available to them necessary to assemble a search result.

Badgerette27

Thank you for that, so annoyed they've picked the slow route


Would be quicker to go look myself!!

Richard_Webster

Using a personal search company generally provides a standard price - which makes it easier for the client and the solicitor in that the cost is easier to predict.

Some councils are cheaper than the private search, most more expensive.

Some councils turn their "own" searches around more quickly than the private agencies, others are the same time and a few are much slower. So it depends.

Southampton can take a few weeks to deal with a private search but official ones come back by e-mail in 3-4 days. One London council I contacted said their official searches were taking about 8 weeks but ist seemed a private search would be a lot quicker, don't ask me why.

Not a big fan of Countrywide and their associated solicitors but really I do have to tell you that 15 days to turn round a search is overall pretty average so in the big scheme of things this is not unreasonable. Will OP have mortgage offer and the solicitors replies to their enquires so they are ready to proceed before then? Is this difference in timescale so critical in this case?

Badgerette27

Thanks for your reply.

The mortgage offer has been in place for a few weeks now.

Water and environmental search are back and fine.

Enquiries have been raised according to the case file online.

We are in Nottinghamshire.

I am probably just being impatient and want everything yesterday!

I just want to do all i can to ease the whole process.