Personal Local Authority Searches have been used by Solicitors and Conveyancers as an alternative to 'Official Local Authority Searches' for many, many years. The industry was created because of frustration property professionals had when trying to procure a search from councils on behalf of their clients who were purchasing properties. The official searches were often very expensive and some councils took many weeks, or in some instances months, to return the reports.
The idea of a Personal Search is that the property purchaser can gather the information on a home they intend to purchase themselves from the council and compile their own report rather than having the council do it for them. This would obviously be quicker and cheaper for them, but the downside is they often didn’t know what information they needed to gather or how to gather it. Personal Search companies offered to do this on behalf of purchasers or their chosen solicitor/conveyancer so that they could receive the benefits of the Personal Search without the hassle. Obviously the Personal Search company made a charge for their time in gathering the data and compiling the report but this was generally significantly cheaper than the charges made by councils to do the same job.
This was a great idea in theory as purchasers and property professionals were given a realistic choice of where to source this required information. However in practice many local authorities did not like their monopoly on providing this information being broken and implemented all types of restrictions on personal search providers to try and make it as difficult as possible for them to access the information and in some instances impossible.
In 2007 Home Information Packs were introduced in England and Wales which meant that to market a property a vendor must have a Hip in place. One of the parts of the Home Information Pack was a Local Authority Search. This could be either personal or official. This was the first time searches of either type had been a legal requirement and the government decided to put regulations in place which applied to both personal searches and official searches in order for them to be ‘Hip Compliant’. When introducing these regulations, the government was made aware of the restrictive practices local authorities had been imposing on personal search companies, and started to create a plan to have them removed. However this would take time, and as a short term fix the government gave personal search companies permission to insure any specific question or questions on the search where a council would not grant the access required to answer the question against any adverse entries.
In April 2009 legislation was finally introduced which forced the Local Authorities to grant access to property information to anyone who required it. It was thought that this would solve the historical problems of providing searches, however it has not been the case.
Many councils are still making life as difficult as possible for personal search companies, introducing new restrictive practices, and in many cases imposing illegal charging policies. Personal search companies are taking legal action where appropriate and hundreds of complaints have been lodged, the results of which are still to be seen.
The overall effect of the new legislation has been the opposite of what was the original intention. In many instances Hip prices have risen and personal searches now take much longer to compile. The main people who are suffering are home owners who simply want to sell their property and in actual fact own the information which the councils hold.