Conveyancing Searches 

News and General 26th November 2025

We have been made aware this morning of a possible cyber-attack affecting a small number of London Boroughs:

• Hackney
• Hammersmith
• Westminster
• Kensington & Chelsea

This may impact the return of Personal and Official Searches for these areas. We will keep you updated as we find out more.

Article 4 Directions. A number of Local Authorities have taken action to introduce Borough Wide Immediate and Non-Immediate Article 4 (1) Directions, that remove permitted development rights for changes of use from individual dwellinghouses to small houses in multiple occupation (HMOs).

Councils which have introduced this change include: Wigan, Sefton, Tameside, Chorley, Bolton, and Rossendale. In many cases these are not yet appearing as Land Charge with results returned from councils, but will be noted within Personal Local Searches at 3.9 (j), and will be included as part of the Land Charges as the Council update their responses. Further consultations are taking place in councils such as Warrington and Oldham.

United Utilities CON29DW Delays. Official Water and Drainage Reports (CON29DW) from United Utilities are being returned much slower than usual. We have contacted United Utilities regarding this and they have apologised and advised the delays are due to staff shortages at the moment.

We've created a "Source of Funds" product, which is in the testing phase. Please bare with us.

Personal Conveyancing Searches;

Completed Personal Searches are a combination of data obtained from different Council departments, specifically; Building, Highways, Land Charges and Planning. Some data is available online, other information needs sending to us by the Council, and in certain situations we need to visit the Council's offices to retrieve the data we need.... and Councils can make search agents wait for available appointment slots. ie. all search firms are in the same boat (so to speak). 

Official Search Prices;

Please contact us to double check pricing. There are around 350 Local Authorities in England and Wales, each with different fees for CON29R, LLC and the 19 CON29O optional questions. Very few of these Local Authorities notify us prior to increasing their fees.

The current average turnaround times (over the past 90 days) for Personal Local Searches is 15 working days. Please note, this can vary depending on individual Local Authorities and their ability to return the data we need. Details of councils where we're experiencing delays are listed below:

Council News. 

Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Councils; The current turnaround time is 45 working days due to council IT issues.

Charnwood Council have experienced an issue with their planning system, the council is aware and working to resolve the issue, but do not have an expected fix date for this. As a result it isn't possible to complete personal local searches. We are monitoring this situation and will return any searches as a matter of priority as soon as we can. Official Searches are unaffected and Charnwood Council are currently quoting 7-10 working days to return these.

Colchester Council are still experiencing delays following the scheduled essential maintenance on their systems. We can offer search delay and no search indemnities; to discuss these options please contact Emily at indemnities@legalbrokers.com for further information.

Derby Council are in the processes of migrating their Land Charges data to the HMLR National database. They are currently not accepting search requests, and will resume service after their go-live date of 1st December.

East Staffordshire have increased to a 30 working day turnaround time for Personal and Official Local Searches due to experiencing issues beyond their control. They are advising chases only be sent after this time has passed. 

Hackney are not accepting "full" Local Search requests at present. There is still the option of a Partial Search, to discuss this further email kath@legalbrokers.com. Alternatively, we  can offer a Search Delay Indemnity Policy for £30 plus IPT, please contact indemnities@legalbrokers.com for further information.

Harrogate Council have emailed us to say they've struggled with a software upgrade (in April) and their processing time for new searches is 30 days. 

LB of Redbridge are experiencing delays in returning information for personal searches. Current turnaround time is approximately 30 working days

Manchester have returned to normal service. They cannot promise anything under the standard 20 working day EIR turnaround, but the majority of search requests are being returned within 10-15 working days.

Norfolk Councils all have a current turn around time of 20 working days, this includes Broadland, South Norfolk, Norwich and Kings Lynn.

Oxford have experienced IT issues recently which has delayed returning information for personal searches by about a week.

Sheffield Council have advised -  Due to staff shortages  we will be experiencing increased timescales for sending out all searches (both full and personal) from now until further notification, which we anticipate at times could go up to around a 25 working day turnaround. We do not envisage that we will be in a position to undertake any expedited searches during this period so please enquire prior to sending this type of request in. If the situation changes we will let you know. Please be assured that we are trying our best to process your requests as quickly as possible and are working hard to reconfigure our resources to minimise the delays.Thank you for your patience, please avoid chaser emails and phone calls until the 25 day period as expired,  as this causes further delay.

Stoke-on-Trent have reduced their return time for Official Searches from 35 working days down to 20 working days

St Albans are experiencing delays of up to 25 days in returning Personal Searches.

Tameside Council Official Searches have reduced down to a 3-4 week turnaround.

Walsall Council are gradually speeding up and turn around time has reduced from 40 working days to 30 working days.

Wyre Council are set to migrate their local land charges register service to HM Land Registry central digital register. Land Charges with this council will not be processed 5th December - 19th December 2025.

New Builds. In some circumstances the development and properties will be registered with the Land Registry (which is where our data comes from) and the site will be able to identify each property. If the Land Registry hasn't got the data we'll need a Plot plan, Location plan, and Development plan. ie. we need to find the property with reference to existing roads and infrastructure. 

In some circumstances it may be quicker to order an Official Search rather than a Personal Search. Officials are generally more expensive, but the Council may offer a faster turnaround time. Please email kath@legalbrokers.com if you have an urgent search requirement.

UK Finance Lenders Handbook. This is available as a stand alone search and an item which can be added to existing bundles. On our order page we will need to know the mortgage lenders name to provide the search. Please contact kath@legalbrokers.com if you would like this adding to you bundle. It's free of charge within bundles!  

We understand that there are unfortunately times that searches have to be cancelled. To make sure your request is received and dealt with promptly, please send all cancellation requests and queries to searches@legalbrokers.com as this email is monitored daily by all members of staff.

Kind Regards

Stacey Armitage

Searches Department

Tel: 0345 603 0708