Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what assessment he has made of the effect on completion times for LLC1 local searches as a result of centralising the local land charges register in line with proposals in the Infrastructure Bill [Lords].

Creating a single, digital Local Land Charges register will lead to a reduction in search turnaround times on average. Searches currently take between 1 and more than 20 days and Land Registry intends to reduce this to minutes. In 2013/14, Land Registry dealt with 11.5 million requests for registers of title and title plans, of which 98.2% were delivered electronically to the customer: Local Land Charges searches are similar and Land Registry will utilise its expertise to provide them in a similar way.