Find out about searches on a property

Local Land Charges are restrictions on a piece of land. Common Local Land Charges may:

• restrict what the owner can use land for
• restrict what building work the owner can do
• stop the owner removing or changing a listed building or parts of the landscape

If the owner does not comply with Local Land Charges, they could be prosecuted.

Local Land Charges apply to the land itself, so they affect anyone who owns it. You must find out if there are any Local Land Charges when you:

• buy land or property
• remortgage land or property

To find out if land is contaminated, you may wish to carry out a contaminated land enquiry instead.

Since the charges do not appear on deeds, you'll need to perform a Local Authority Search to find out what they are. We recommend you ask your solicitor to organise this.

We can do an official search to find out what Local Land Charges apply to your property. There are many benefits to doing an official search:

• council staff have experience carrying out official searches. This means you can be confident they will not make any mistakes.
• we can find information about land which does not appear on the Land Charges Register. We'll give you this information in a CON29 form. Lots of this information is held in our own records, and not all of it is available to the public.
• the law covers you if we miss anything on an official search. You'll get compensation if anything goes wrong because of our mistake.
• we aim to provide 95 per cent of official land charges search results within three working days.

If you ask for a full official search, we'll give information set out on two forms:

LLC1 form

The LLC1 form shows you any information in the Local Land Charges register. It will find specific charges which apply to a piece of land. These include:

• financial charges
• planning charges
• Tree Preservation Orders
• Land Charges made due to a previous breach of planning rules on the site

CON29 form

The CON29 form shows you general information about a piece of land. This includes:

• highways
• planning history
• building control information

You can request either of these forms individually.

Third parties

Some third parties can make an official search for you. Visit the National Land Information Service website (opens new window) or the TM Group website (opens new window) for more information.

Personal searches

If you wish to carry out a personal search on a property, email the address of the property and a plan to landcharges@guildford.gov.uk. The Local Land Charges register for the property will then be emailed to you. Please allow three working days for us to respond.

This type of search means you will only find information which would be on an LLC1 form. You will not find all CON29 information, but you can look through statutory registers, including:

• the planning register
• the highways register

CON29 Information can be given to you at a cost of £8.00 per question. You can let us know your questions in your email.

Environmental Information Regulations

The law states you can access any environmental information we hold for free. This includes some of the registers we use to answer CON29 questions. To search this information, complete our online support form (opens new window) or call us on 01483 505050. You'll need to book an appointment to view the register electronically at our office. Appointments can be made between 9am and 4pm, Monday to Friday.

Not all environmental information is dealt with by the Customer and Case Services Team. To answer CON29 questions, make a formal request to our Information Rights Officer instead.

Make a request to view environmental information.

Our fees depend on the kind of property we need to search the register for. A residential property is a property someone lives in. A commercial property is a property owned or used by a business.

CON29O

If you have specific questions, you can submit an optional enquiry. The form for this is called a CON29O.

Questions about the following cost £25.50 each:

• road proposals by private bodies (4) 
• flood defence and land drainage consents (21)
• common land and town or village greens (22)

Questions about the following cost £13 each:

• advertisements (5)
• completion notices (6)
• parks and countryside (7)
• pipelines (8)
• houses in multiple occupation (9)
• noise abatement (10)
• urban development areas (11)
• enterprise zones, local development orders and business improvement districts (12)
• inner urban improvement areas (13)
• simplified planning zones (14)
• land maintenance notices (15)
• mineral consultation and safeguarding areas (16)
• hazardous substance consents (17)
• environmental and pollution notices (18)
• food safety notices (19)
• hedgerow notices (20) 

Any additional parcels of land you want us to search cost £18 each. 

Please send questions about highways to Surrey County Council (opens new window) and drainage enquiries to Thames Water (opens new window).

To arrange an official search, you'll need to provide:

• the necessary forms - LLC1 and CON29 (ask your solicitor for a copy to complete)
• an up-to-date plan of the property which clearly shows the boundaries

Email the forms and plan to landcharges@guildford.gov.uk and pay for them with our online form.

Pay for an official land charges search

We aim to complete an official search within three working days. If you need us to do a search urgently, contact us on 01483 505050. We'll do our best to get you the results as soon as possible.