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Four days for searches

Catherine Deshayes

New performance tables have revealed that the national average turnaround for local authority property search is four days...   

Official Local Authority data from Land Data reveals the national average turnaround for an electronic local authority (LA) property search is four days and the average over the counter search fee for a combined search is £117.

The performance tables reveal the lowest fee charged for a combined search in August 2008, was just £40 charged by Wakefield Metropolitan District Council. The highest was £286 charged by Barnet London Borough Council.

Sixteen of the 410 LAs analysed charge more than £200 and 46 charge less than £90.

Turnaround times of electronic searches vary between LAs, with 10 delivering results in less than one day, 27 taking between one and two days and a further 60 taking between two and three days.

The research revealed only eight of the 410 LAs analysed take 10 days or more.

As Local Authority fees and search turnaround times can fluctuate on a month by month basis, Land Data has analysed data over a six month period to reveal the LAs who have consistently performed well and those that have consistently underperformed.

Lewisham London Borough Council features as a top performer reducing its fee by £85 over the period. The biggest fee increase over the same period came from Surrey Heath Borough Council with an increase of 65 per cent.

Dover District Council shows an improvement of over 85 per cent for consistently reducing its turnaround time of NLIS electronic searches, while Newcastle upon Tyne has increased its turnaround by an average of 6.5 days.

Source: Land Data