What is a Local Land Charge search?
A Local Land Charges search is required to ensure that a purchaser of land or property is aware of obligations or 'charges 'held on the Local Land Charges register against that land or property.
The word 'charge' is not defined by statute, but is used to describe a burden imposed on land, the most important factor being that the charge must be binding on successive owners or occupiers of land and/or property.
The charges detailed on the Local Land Charges Register would not normally be disclosed by a perusal of the title deeds or indeed by an inspection of the land or property itself. Local Land Charges may be of a financial or non-financial nature.
A Local Land Charge search is carried out when a property is advertised for sale, leased or re-mortgaged and is usually carried out by your solicitor.
The search consists of two parts:
1. The LLC1 - This is the official certificate that deals with all the charges recorded in the Local Land Charges Register. These charges include for example, grants, tree preservation orders, financial charges, listed buildings, and conservation areas.
2. The Conveyancing Form (Con 29) - This form deals with proposed issues such as proposed road schemes, drainage, environmental matters, proposed tree preservation orders etc. This form deals with matters that are not held on the Local Land Charges Register.
The Con 29 is divided into two parts:
a. Con 29 (R) - This covers matters referred to in paragraph 2 above.
b. Con 29 (O) - These are optional enquiries and the questions that you require must be ticked in box C of the form. These questions relate to matters such as footpaths, pipelines, food safety notices, common land enquiries etc. Each question asked incurs an additional fee.
The search will only give the information relating to the property and/or land identified on the plan, it will not give information relating to adjoining or nearby properties.
Each search request form LLC1, Con 29 (R) and Con 29 (O) can be submitted independently from the other but must be accompanied by the appropriate fee.
Please ensure that all search request are signed and dated,an electronic signature will suffice for those submitted electronically.
Please note there is a change to the policy on cancelling a search once it has been entered into the system, from 1st April 2012 it will not be possible to cancel a search if it has already been entered into the Local Land Charges computer system.