Peterborough is eighth council to move Local Land Charge enquiries online

Peterborough has become the latest area to migrate its local land charge (LLC) search service from paper documents to a digital Register since the national scheme began 20 months or so ago. Its city council is the eighth large local authority to make the move to online, a service that is expected to significantly speed up the conveyancing process. This latest news is part of a rolling HM Land Registry programme to digitise the LLC process for both professionals and the public and follows similar roll-outs in Lambeth, Warwick, Liverpool, City of London, Blackpool and the Isles of Scilly. “Users are charged either £15 for an official search or can conduct a personal search for free. Search results provide information about any charges against a property such as outstanding planning permissions or listed building status.” It is expected to take several years to complete the project, largely because tens of thousands of documents have to be scanned and digitised at each council. Karina Singh (left), Director of Transformation at HM Land Registry, says: “Migrating Peterborough to our national LLC Register is a significant milestone for us as it’s the largest number of paper records that we’ve digitised so far. “This…