WIREDGOV

HM Land Registry’s digital Local Land Charges Register continues to grow, enabling the digital transformation of homebuying.

From 31 January 2020, anyone requiring local land charges (LLC) searches in the local authority area of Peterborough City Council will need to get them from HM Land Registry rather than going directly to the council.

Karina Singh, Director of Transformation at HM Land Registry, recently said:

Migrating Peterborough to our national LLC Register is a significant milestone for us as it’s the largest number of paper records that we’ve digitised so far. This will make life easier for property buyers across the area, providing round the clock online access to the information they need.

Michelle Abbott, senior lawyer for Peterborough City Council, recently said: 

We are proud to be the eighth local authority in the country to transfer its land charges data to HM Land Registry’s digital service. Speeding up the property-buying process benefits ourselves, our residents and our businesses. Improving the quality and ease of access to over 30,000 local land charges will improve the experience of buying and selling properties in the Peterborough area.

Local land charges describe restrictions on the use of a property such as planning permissions or listed buildings and are usually required in the property-buying process. A local land charges search will reveal whether a property is subject to a charge, which then informs a buyer’s decision to buy that property or land.

HM Land Registry is working in partnership with local authorities in England to migrate their local land charges data to a central, digital register. Once migrated, anyone will be able to get instant online search results using the Search for local land charges service.

HM Land Registry’s business customers can use their existing portal and Business Gateway channels or their usual search providers to access local land charges data for those local authorities which have migrated.

Customers will need to continue to submit CON29 enquiries to the local authority.

Watch a video about the Local Land Charges service

For an overview of the service, watch our short video.

For more information, read about the Local Land Charges Programme.