Searches - land charges

Land charges search requests

When buying a property or piece of land, your solicitor will submit a local land charges search request. A local search protects the purchaser against unknowingly inheriting land charges, prohibitions held against the property or land and will warn of impending proposals so you are aware of any charges or responsibilities you will be taking on when you exchange contracts.

The word 'charge' can mean any outstanding financial claim, any restrictions, decisions or information which may affect a particular property or parcel of land.

There are two types of searches which can be performed. They are:

• official local authority search
• personal search

Official local authority search

The council will investigate and bring all the information together in the form of a local authority search. The information is collected from different council departments including planning and building control, environmental services and highways services.

Personal search

Some solicitors use personal agencies that inspect public registers and consult other areas of information to provide their own search responses. The council cannot guarantee responses given by personal agency searches.

There are two types of search report forms:

Form LLC1

This consists of a search of the Land Charges Register. It reveals if there are any outstanding charges where money is owed to the council when work has been carried out on the property or land.

Other charges include tree preservation orders, renovation grants, conservation and listed buildings, road agreements, conditional planning applications and enforcement notices.

Forms Con29 and Con29O

This questionnaire takes the form of two parts and the information comes from various council departments.

1. Con29 contains standard questions revealing any road proposals or schemes, public paths, compulsory purchase orders, enforcement actions, building regulations or planning applications and formal or informal notices
2. Con29O contains optional enquiries such as noise abatement orders and pollution notices

Searching for Building Control applications online

• How to search for Building Control Records online (PDF, 1MB)

The PDF file above may not be suitable to view for people with disabilities, users of assistive technology or mobile phone devices.

Fees

The price of a full search includes one free refresh search within six months of the date of the search. The original search must be returned with the application.

Submitting a search

All official searches must be accompanied by appropriate Law Society compliant forms. Your solicitor should have these forms or you can buy them from legal stationers.

Both the LLC1 and CON29 forms should be submitted at the same time if answers to both are required.

Please note that searches must include the following when submitted to be accepted for processing:

• the correct fee (see above list of fees)
• solicitors or clients’ own cheques are accepted and are to be made out with the correct amount to Wirral Council
• plans should be submitted in duplicate with the search area edged red. The plan, preferably at a scale of 1:1250 should have sufficient detail to enable land Charges staff to accurately locate the search area
• if the property is on a new development we may require a developer’s plan showing the position of the building plots and the location of the site in relation to the surrounding area

Ownership enquiries

We regret we are unable to answer questions about who owns a property. However it is possible to enquire of HM Land Registry at:

Land Registry
Rosebrae Court
Woodside Ferry Approach
Birkenhead
CH41 6DU

Tel: 0300 006 0411

Opening hours: 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday