The Government’s drive to consolidate councils could lead to house buyers waiting longer for local searches.
Merging or reorganising councils to form a single governing body is seen as a way to improve efficiency and streamline administration. For example, in 2023 four district councils – Mendip, Sedgemoor, Somerset West & Taunton and South Somerset merged with Somerset County Council to form a new unitary authority, Somerset Council.
But consolidation can delay the local searches during the conveyancing process. I can certainly see the argument behind consolidating councils – a number have already successfully merged and others are talking openly about the possibility.
However, I fear in the short term it could worsen the well-publicised problem of delayed local searches.
Firstly, it could result in fewer people working in the Land Charges department covering a much larger housing stock, which has obvious repercussions.
Secondly, many councils are still yet to digitalise and physical documents are being held in different places once consolidation has taken place. Highways documents might be in a certain building in one town, building regs in another, environmental somewhere else and so on.
This inevitably adds confusion and time to an already laborious process.
Some local authorities have used the downturn in the property market to successfully cut waiting times for local searches, but others are still taking between 40 and 50 days to turn requests around, leaving house buyers waiting in limbo.
But, with the property market anticipated to grow, search times could creep upwards again. Many new build properties are set to come onto the market over the next decade as the Government pushes on with its planning reforms. We must make sure the process for local searches is set up to cope with demand – and that is where specialist search companies can help with speeding up local searches.
Richard Bray is managing director of Move Reports
