Fee price set to change for personal searches

From 2010 the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) has released plans to increase the fee price for a personal search of the Local Land Charges (LLC1) register by 100%. Fees for personal searches came into play in 2003 and have been set at £11 ever since, but as of January 2010 will change to £22.

The MOJ confirmed that there will be no changes to the process of how the personal search fee is currently set and it will still remain centrally controlled rather than locally, despite lobbying from local authorities who want the process to be changed to a locally set cost recovery basis. The MOJ argue that this was a reasonable rise with some local authorities asking for an increase of between £33 to as much as £80.

Owen Davies, Business Development Executive at Severn Trent Searches has been working with Local Land Charges departments since 2003 and explains that, "a 100% increase in fees will almost certainly have a knock on effect on the price of personal searches to the consumer. At least any financial impact in this case will be less than the cost increase that occurred as a result of the regulation changes in April this year. "

As the price for fees are set to increase to £22, the Government rejected calls for higher fees, arguing that this was as much of an increase as it is reasonable for businesses and consumers in this current economic state.

Severn Trent Searches offer both personal searches provided by OneSearch Direct and official Local Authority Searches within the Severn Trent Region.

For more information about Local Authority searches please call us on 0115 962 7269 or click here