The Department published guidance on 18 January: ‘Personal searches of the local land charges register and other records held by local authorities—Good practice guidance for local authorities and personal searchers’; and the consultation paper ‘Local Authority Property Search Services: Charges for Property Search Services—A consultation paper’. The consultation period ends on 18 April.
Together these two documents aim to deliver the level playing field that the Office of Fair Trading identified as being necessary to increase competition in the provision of property searches.