Liverpool yesterday became only the second place in the country after Warwick to have the new Land Registry access to Local Land Charges. This may not sound very glamorous but for the first time conveyancers and the public have immediate access to information held by local authorities in respect of planning and financial charges, an extremely important part of the house purchase process, without having to wait for days or even weeks for the local authority to provide the information through part of the local authority search which is carried out when buying a property.
A further bonus us that some of the information can be viewed free at HERE However if you wish to obtain a formal certificate of the result you pay £15.
This facility will be extremely useful particularly when a property is being purchased at auction and the results of searches are not provided in the legal pack.
Also if you do purchase a certificate you can monitor the result for up to six months without further charge to ascertain whether the register has changed.
Currently the immediate information is only available for properties within the local authority areas of Warwick and Liverpool being in the first phase of this project for the Land Registry which will be spread out over the country in the next two years.