In practice, the information needed for a single search can be scattered across multiple council departments and systems. Planning, highways, building control, environmental health, housing and land charges rarely sit neatly together. Some records are fully digitised, others only partially scanned, and some still rely on older systems or paper files. It can all look fine until one small detail doesn’t line up.
That is usually where things start to slow down.
Access is often the first hurdle. Every local authority works to its own rules. One council may allow relatively open access, while the next restricts visibility to internal staff only. Some require written requests for each dataset, and in certain areas key information still has to be checked in person. Even where online portals exist, the gaps often only become obvious once a conveyancer starts asking questions.
Building Control is a familiar pressure point. Some councils will not share data at all, while others introduce charges under the banner of cost recovery, sometimes based on estimated hourly rates quoted at £70 to £110 per hour. Paying them does not mean the information arrives any sooner.
And this is where experience really matters.
It is not unusual to see highways information pointing one way while planning records suggest another. Environmental data might flag a historic issue without saying whether it was ever resolved, while older planning references can sit in isolation with no obvious link to modern systems. Anyone working across multiple authorities will have seen this happen. Knowing whether something needs chasing, explaining or pushing back on is rarely obvious from the data alone.
The transfer of Local Land Charges to HM Land Registry has brought welcome improvements in consistency and access. While IPSA members were not universally convinced at the outset, many have supported the direction of travel as it has developed. Yet it has not removed the wider challenge. Much of the information conveyancers rely on still sits outside that register, often under mixed or transitional arrangements.
On paper it looks tidy.
In practice, it can raise just as many questions about where the most reliable version of the data actually sits.
Volume adds another layer altogether. There is now more property data available than ever before. Automated systems can pull it together quickly, yet they do not refine it. Long reports full of raw entries can create uncertainty rather than clarity, and one line buried deep in a report can generate days of follow-up. This is where IPSA members routinely step in, applying judgement to separate what genuinely matters from what simply exists.
Council resourcing pressures only add to this. The move towards larger unitary authorities, often covering populations of 500,000 or more, has created distance on several levels. Smaller local councils have been absorbed, close contact with local communities has reduced, and with it a depth of understanding about how areas actually work.
That shift has also coincided with the loss of highly experienced staff. People who knew historic decisions, local anomalies and unwritten quirks have moved on, taking that knowledge with them. Unitary authorities may look efficient on paper, yet in practice they often make it harder to locate the right information, let alone interpret it with confidence.
Teams are stretched, staff move on, and long-held local knowledge is not always written down anywhere. What used to be a quick conversation can now involve waiting days for a response, only to discover the query sits with a different department.
None of this is dramatic in isolation.
It just adds up.
All of which explains why property searches are rarely about access alone. They are about interpretation, responsibility and knowing when something does not quite feel right. This work often goes unseen, yet it quietly underpins confidence and helps transactions progress.
These realities sit at the heart of this week’s IPSA Kind Of Magic. Chaired by Gareth Wax and joined by Hamish McLay, Chairman of IPSA, the discussion will also include Val Bennett, bringing further experience and insight into the practical realities members face when retrieving and refining property data, and why independent, local expertise still matters even as systems become more digital.
The session goes out live on Wednesday at 1pm, and members are encouraged to share their own experiences before, during or after the discussion. Those shared observations are often where the most useful learning happens.
You can watch live or catch up via the Spilling the Proper-Tea YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@SpillingTheProper-Tea
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