Local land charges
The Local Land Charges Services provides local authority searches. These are usually required when you are buying property and give you information about planning applications, planned developments, highway schemes and financial charges that affect the property you are interested in. These searches will often be arranged by your solicitors, when they are dealing with your house purchase. They ensure that you are aware of all relevant facts about the property you are interested in purchasing, before you make the final decision to buy.
Requesting a Local Authority Search
To request a full local authority search, please complete and submit one copy of form LLC1 and CON29. If you require any of the optional enquiries, please submit one copy of form CON29O. These forms are available from all legal stationers. A plan which clearly shows the extent of the area to be searched is also required.
The search forms and plan can be submitted via email to locallandcharges@bradford.gov.uk.
Payment can be made via BACS (details available on request) or by credit or debit card. If submitting a search via email, please state how you will make payment.
We aim to return search results within 6 working days. Our current turnaround time is 4 working days.
Scale of fees 2024-25
| Search | Fee |
|---|---|
| LLC1 | £6.80 |
| CON29R (Standard Enquiries) | £142.00 |
| Standard search (CON29R + LLC1) | £148.80 |
| CON29O (Optional Enquiries) | £12 each |
| Extra Parcels of Land on CON29 | £28 each |
All fees are inclusive of VAT on CON29 and CON29O.
The Register
The Local Land Charges Register is maintained by all Metropolitan, City, Unitary and District Councils in England and Wales and in London by the London Boroughs.
The Purpose of the Register
The 1925 property legislation had as one of its major objects the protection of purchasers of land, thereby enabling practical conveyancing to be simplified, and the Land Charges Act furthered this objective by requiring charges on land that run with the land to be registered in public registers in which searches for such charges could be easily made. Under the Local Land Charges Act 1975, Local Authorities are the registering authorities and it is their duty to register charges brought into existence by themselves or by another originating authority.
The Legislation
The basic law relating to local land charges was introduced by then Land Charges Act 1925 (Amended by the Law of Property (Amendment) Act 1926) and this remained the only statute on the subject for many years.
After minor amendments made by the Land Charges Act 1972, the law is now a code contained in the Local Land Charges Act 1975 and the Local Land Charges Rules 1977. Both of these came into operation on the 1 August 1977. The Act of 1975 made a fresh start, then whole of the Land Charges Act 1925 was repealed and all rules made before 1 August 1977 ceased to take effect.
Local Land Charges Act 1975
The most considerable change of principle is to be found in Section 10, which has the effect of making any local land charge enforceable against subsequent purchasers of the land affected, whether or not the charge has been actually registered at a material date and whether or not its existence (when registered) has been disclosed by an official certificate of search requisitioned by or on behalf of a purchaser. All entries registerable in the register are expressly made local land charges – there are no longer any items that are registerable ‘as if they were local land charges’ and Schedule 1 to the Act contains a long list of detailed amendments to earlier statutes to this effect. Acts passed since 1977 have generally followed this practice.
Local Land Charges Rules 1977
The principal feature of these rules as compared with their predecessors is their simplicity and brevity.
Instead of there being a Rule for each Part of the register, the Rules give a list of the 12 Parts with a concise description of the nature of the charges registerable in each Part.