News story: Digital Local Land Charges Register goes live for City of London Corporation

From 8 October 2018, anyone requiring Local Land Charges searches for the Square Mile will need to get them from HM Land Registry rather than going directly to the City of London Corporation.

The City of London Corporation follows 2 other local authorities in migrating its Local Land Charges data to the new national register following the launch of the new service on 11 July 2018 with Warwick District Council.

Allison Bradbury, Head of the Local Land Charges Programme at HM Land Registry, said:

“The City of London has one of the most dynamic business property markets in the world. By making their local land charges information instantly accessible via HM Land Registry’s central, digital register, we are ensuring that customers can access essential information about property transactions instantly, saving both time and money.”

Richard Steele, Corporate Spatial Data Manager at the City of London Corporation, said:

“While there are relatively few residents in the Square Mile, we have around 500,000 workers. This means a lot of buildings in a small area and around 23,000 local land charges relating to those buildings. Previously, our local land charges data was held in a mixture of paper and digital systems. Before migrating all the information to HM Land Registry’s digital register, we have digitised and accuracy-checked all the data. This helps to reduce business risk for future property transactions in the area. By taking part in the process the turnaround times for local land charges search results for properties in the City will be reduced from days to seconds.”

HM Land Registry is working in partnership with a number of local authorities in England this year to migrate their Local Land Charges data to a central, digital register. Once migrated, anyone will be able to get instant online search results via GOV.UK 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.

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

HM Land Registry is leading the way in using digital technology to provide quicker and simpler services for homebuyers.

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

Creating a national Local Land Charges Register

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