A national programme to move all local land charges information to one centralised register is impacting turnaround times for local people buying houses.
We are just one of more than 300 local authorities involved in the mammoth task to transfer our local Local Land Charges (LLC) register to the national site.
Speed up the property purchasing process
An LLC search is where a council provides information it holds on a property during the property purchasing process. The purchaser’s solicitor makes the request to the council on their behalf, usually via an agent. The type of information that appears on a search varies depending on the property, but will show charges such as tree preservation orders, planning decisions, restrictions on the use of land and much more.
The purpose of the switch is to speed up the property purchasing process, making it easier for all those involved in the business of buying a house to access information more easily.
There will be a standard £15 fee for each search and customers will benefit from instant online search results, with 24/7 access to the data, reducing delays in receiving search results.
The Government’s Department for Levelling up, Housing & Communities, monitors every local council’s LLC search turnaround times. In normal circumstances Epping Forest District Council’s is around 10 days, but it is currently running at 10 weeks, due to the wealth of work involved in data checking and migration ready for the changeover. While this is within the government’s 12-week grace period it is hoped that this can be significantly reduced within the next 2 weeks while there is a lull in project tasks.
Improvement to those who need it
Councillor Sam Kane, Cabinet Member for Internal Resource said:
Our land charges team is going through a challenging time at the moment.
The process is consuming tremendous resources but once the new system goes live we will see a drastic improvement in the service provided to those who need it.
Keep up to date
Keep in touch with our latest news, service updates and reports.