Personal Local Search
A personal local search is carried out when you are buying or selling a house. A set fee is paid to the local authority to allow access to the council’s records to make sure that when you have purchased the property there are no hidden surprises or outstanding notices of charges (from former owners).
There are three parts to a Personal Local Search:
LLC1 – This is the official Certificate of Search which deals with any registerable charges (registered against the property by the local authority). This includes improvement grants, tree preservation orders, conditional planning consent and agreements.
Con29R – This deals with enquiries made to the local authorities. This includes Road Schemes, planning history and various notices which affect the property.
Con29O – Any further optional enquiries.
Water & Drainage Searches:
A water and drainage search is a search carried out to provide essential information regarding the water and sewerage services for a property.
The water search includes:
- Plans of Sewers and Water assets
- Connection to public water and sewerage systems
- Proximity of sewer and water mains to the property
- Building over consents
- Water quality analysis
- Sewer flooding information
- Location of nearest public sewage treatment works
- Sewer and water mains adoption information
- Detailed basis of charging information
- Water meter information
Chancel Searches:
If a property is situated near a church or is on land formerly owned by some of the older universities there may be an obligation to contribute towards repairs to the chancel/steeple of the local parish church. To obtain this information a Chancel search is carried out which a fee is paid to inspect the National Archives. It is estimated that 40% of property in England is affected by these charges.
Flood Search:
According to the Environment Agency around 5 Million people living in around 2 Million properties in the UK are currently living in flood risk areas. A Flood search can determine whether or not a property and the surrounding areas could be affected by flooding and what defences are currently in place. Groundwater flooding and risk from coastal and river sources are taken into consideration.
Homecheck Environmental Searches
An environmental search is carried out to determine any key issues that could affect the enjoyment of your home. A number of issues are taken into deliberation: flooding, subsidence, potential contamination (Past and Historical) use of land, current and former landfill sites and radon.