Information on Local Land Charges and searches

Find out about Local Land Charges and searches of the register

Local Land Charge

A Local Land Charge search is usually needed when buying or selling property or land. The search is normally organised by your solicitor or licensed conveyancer on your behalf as part of the house buying process. You can do a search yourself if you wish, please contact the team to find out how.

Charges and restrictions

The council or government can demand payment from new owners of land or property if a ‘charge’ has been placed on it, even if someone else was living there at the time.

There may also be restrictions on the property or land that you must obey. This could be protecting a tree from being removed or conservation rules meaning your property needs to look a certain way.

We keep the register of all the local land charges and restrictions that affect properties in our area.

The Local Land Charges search will show if any of these charges or restrictions are on the property or land you are buying.

The different searches

There are three types of searches that your solicitor or conveyancer can request.

LLC1 - covers charges and restrictions on the property which would be binding on any future owners e.g. tree preservation order, listed building status, conservation areas, planning agreements, enforcement notices, Community Infrastructure Levy notices and various grants.

CON29- covers things like planning history and enforcement, building control, environmental health and highways information.

CON29O (Optional enquiries) - covers things like road proposals by private bodies, advertisements, houses in multiple occupation, hazardous substance consents and common land.

How long does it take

This will depend on who is doing the search.

Our trained and professional staff can return a completed search within 2 days. We then send the results to your solicitor or conveyancer.

If a personal search company has been paid to perform a search this may take longer. It can take up to 10 working days for the information to reach your solicitor or conveyancer. The length of time you have to wait for this is not something we can control.

Performing a search

We have a professional, award-winning team who can search the register and send the results in an official search certificate back to your solicitor or conveyancer. All of our searches are covered by professional indemnity insurance. Contact the team to find out more.

You have the right to search the register yourself, this is called a personal search. There is no fee for this, and you can find out more information on our Personal Search page.

There are also personal search companies that some solicitors use for the search instead of coming directly to us. Someone from their team will inspect the register and then charge the solicitor or conveyancer for that information.

You are strongly advised to check if planning obligations and conditions have been complied with on any new dwelling/development. The Planning department actively monitor condition and obligation compliance and inform the Local Land Charges team where a note needs to be recorded, however not all outstanding issues will necessarily have been identified.

Therefore, it is suggested you write to planning@arun.gov.uk to check if any or all section 106 obligations have been discharged. A search of the Local Land Charges Register may reveal clear commentary that a section 106 agreement has been fully complied with, however, it is also recommended that a full official Local Authority Search is completed to pick up any other warnings revealed on the CON29 response. Further information can be found on our Land Charges information page.

You can check yourself if planning conditions have been discharged (on applications determined after 2010) by using our planning application search. To do this you can: 

  • enter the planning application reference
  • click on ‘Other Applications on site’ to check for ‘Planning Approval of Conds’ type applications (They are suffixed with DOC (For Discharge of Conditions).

Alternatively, you may request we do the condition check for you but there is a charge for this. Please email planning@arun.gov.uk for more information.