Council search delayed a month - anything we can do?

ktf2020

Hi all. Our solicitor has forwarded me an email from their search provider saying the council has advised them that our search result has been changed from 20th November to 17th December - no reason given by the council but solicitor has said he thinks it's everyone rushing to get the stamp duty holiday plus the plus council working from home....
Is there anything we can do to speed this up? We are both working from home in a rented flat and it's been awful, the only thing getting me through it was the thought of moving
If not, please can anyone advise on the timeline from the search result? Just wondering if there's now any hope of being in by Christmas!

FinallyStoppedLurking

There are private companies that carry out searches. Google regulated local authority searches. 

AdrianC

FinallyStoppedLurking said:

There are private companies that carry out searches. Google regulated local authority searches. 

Sounds like they're using one...

ktf2020 said:

Hi all. Our solicitor has forwarded me an email from their search provider saying the council has advised them...

FinallyStoppedLurking

Ah, missed that. Probably not then.
We recently found out that searches haven't been commissioned yet for one of the houses in our chain. We're aware this could cause rather long delays so are pushing for a break in chain. 

FinallyStoppedLurking

In terms of time lines, we received our searches report from our solicitor within a week of him receiving them. That was a week ago and there are still some enquirers that we are waiting for answers on from the vendors/their solicitors. 

Solicitors tend to shut up over Christmas so if the search date isn't until the 17th December I think a Christmas move is unlikely unfortunately. 

knightstyle

DD had a similar problem as the flat she is buying is ex-council and the council are the leaseholders. # months down the line her solicitor still has not had answers to basic questions.
Councils just do not care, there is no incentive to do their job and people like our daughter suffer from it.
Repeated emails and recorded phone messages are ignored.

davidmcn

You can forego the local search altogether by instead getting search insurance against the tiny risk that it would have revealed something bad.

ktf2020

Thanks all. The search is being done by a private provider but it's all being managed through our solicitor. I think it is a council issue (rather than an issue with the provider). Somehow they're getting away with just updating their website with 'Due to the current sheer volume of personal search requests, together with the Gateway Building Covid 19 restrictions, personal searches are taking about eight weeks for a booking.' It's pretty annoying they can do that when the government is pushing everyone to buy houses asap with the stamp duty holiday!

I will look into search insurance...

slipthru

ktf2020 said:

Thanks all. The search is being done by a private provider but it's all being managed through our solicitor. I think it is a council issue (rather than an issue with the provider). Somehow they're getting away with just updating their website with 'Due to the current sheer volume of personal search requests, together with the Gateway Building Covid 19 restrictions, personal searches are taking about eight weeks for a booking.' It's pretty annoying they can do that when the government is pushing everyone to buy houses asap with the stamp duty holiday!

I will look into search insurance...

I'm facing the same issue, council say 7 weeks for searches to come through. I'd be interested to know if you find search insurance as when i mentioned it to my solicitor a week ago he just went on about the chancel insurance.

ktf2020

In case this is helpful to anyone else (including @slipthru)
We chased our solicitor/the search provider and they said were already doing a personal search. We resigned ourselves to a delay. However last week, they let slip that a council search would be quicker and said they could do that within 18 days. We were obviously annoyed this wasn't recommended at the start as it would have been complete by now! In frustration with the poor communication we called Thanet council direct (who picked up the phone on first ring) and said we could request a council search ourselves which would be done in 6-8 working days and cost less than we were being quoted. 

So advice for anyone would be to call the council direct to clarify what you're hearing elsewhere and not assume personal searches are quicker. 

slipthru

Thanks for this info, thanet council is the council i'm dealing with to. What about the other searches are they coming back quickly?