The move will transform the process of buying a home and will be of great benefit to homebuyers and anyone involved in England’s property industry.

Prior to the transfer Warwick District Council and HM Land Registry (HMLR) had been working in partnership for a number of months to create a single digital local land charges register for the district.

A search of local land charges (obligations on land or property such as listed status or tree preservation orders) is usually required when buying a house and is essential to mortgage lenders’ understanding of the risks to their loans. These records have been traditionally held by Local Authorities in a both paper and digital formats and could take up to 30 days to process.

The transfer of the land charges data by Warwick District Council is the start of revolutionising an archaic system, enabling many local land charges searches to be carried out using a state of the art, digital service.

As the first local authority to transfer this data, the Council’s project team are now been asked to share their knowledge and experience as the scheme is rolled out nationally. On 4 October the Council’s Development Manager, Gary Fisher gave a presentation at the national Local Land Charges conference in London to over 300 local authority and industry representatives, he commented;

“I’m very proud that Warwick District Council has led the way on this project and am very pleased to be able to give advice and support to other authorities as they embark on this journey.”

Warwick District Council’s Portfolio Holder for Development Councillor Alan Rhead added;

“Our ground-breaking work means that property buyers, agents and conveyancers will be able to carry out local land charges searches online, reducing time spent requesting information and waiting for the search results. By speeding up the process from days to seconds, we are helping to make home buying simpler, faster and cheaper.”