Built to Thrive: OneSearch’s Three-Decade Journey in Property Data

The year is 1995. Barely anyone knows what an email is, and smartphones are a distant dream. A young Liz Jarvis begins her career in property, facing challenges that seem almost Dickensian by today’s standards.

Her daily routine often involved grappling with a map tank, a gargantuan metal beast filled with oversized paper maps held together with tape and a prayer, where crucial property details were manually drawn, scribbled out, and drawn again. It was a world of queues for the library photocopiers and urgent pager calls, with the hope the local phone box still worked.

This era marked the early steps of OneSearch, and as Liz, now Managing Director, looks back on her three-decade journey with the company, it reveals far more than just a personal ascent. It’s a compelling narrative of how OneSearch grew from those analogue roots to become a leader in digital data, a testament to its enduring adaptability, formidable resilience, and an uncompromising dedication to delivering the complete, accurate picture to conveyancing professionals.

OneSearch, then known as SPH, began its life in 1992, rooted in a small-town planning practice in West Dunbartonshire. Thirty years ago, the world of property data was a landscape unrecognisable to today’s digital natives. There was no email, no instant downloads, no bespoke systems. Information was solely a physical commodity, painstakingly collected and manually processed.

“How we used to have to stand in a public library and commandeer the photocopier all day as we copied agendas,” Liz recalls, a chuckle in her voice. Her colleague, Heather Nash, who started around the same time, paints an even more vivid picture: “I remember having to go and photocopy Tree Preservation Orders and planning applications and then navigate my way back on the train… with my bag full of photocopies all the way back to the office again.” These bags, heavy with paper, were just the start. Once back at the office, everything had to be manually input.

Even basic communication was an odyssey. If a “roadie” – OneSearch’s intrepid data collectors – was out in the field, a pager would summon them. “You always had spare change in your pocket and try and find a public payphone which wasn’t always the easiest,” Carol Gildea, OneSearch Head of Operations recounts. “It’s like Victorian times,” Liz adds, reflecting on the sheer obstacles posed by communication in those early days.

The physical office mirrored this paper-heavy reality. “Everything used to be held on lever arch files,” Carol explains. “If you wanted to find out to conduct the search you had to check all of the folders individually.” Shelves groaned under the weight of paperwork, maps, and written statements. The morning post wasn’t just a handful of letters; it was “literally sacks and sacks of newspapers for the data collection.” Search results, once compiled, had to be printed, stuffed into huge DX or legal post bags, and physically collected each day. Caroline Taylor, who joined OneSearch in 2006, remembers that “opening all the mail used to be like a task that would typically take all morning.”

The Front Lines: Roadies, Resistance, and Resilience

Liz, Carol, and Heather were among OneSearch’s early roadies, the pioneers who ventured out to councils across Scotland to gather data first-hand. Their job wasn’t just physical; it was often met with resistance.

Carol vividly recalls an encounter with one planner in particular. She needed clarity on a smudged entry in a vast map register, where planning applications were often written in pencil. The planner’s response was, to say the least, a tad hostile.

“I remember them saying things to us like, ‘you’re stealing the bread from our children’s mouths’. They said it so loudly that everyone in the planning department just stopped what they were doing and looked.

“And I thought to myself back then, what kind of company have I joined here?!”

This intense opposition, born from fear of a new, more efficient model, forced OneSearch to be tenacious and innovative. Liz even shared how they had to “create different company names to get in to get more appointments” with councils that limited access.

Despite the challenges, the roadie life fostered a unique camaraderie and deep understanding of the country. Liz’s personal “food run” – collecting Forfar bridies, Arbroath smokies, and Aberdeen butteries for colleagues and neighbours – paints a warm, amusing picture of the lengths they went to. Carol echoes the sentiment: “It was actually one of my favourite roles… I just loved the freedom of meeting people and going to different areas every day.” Even the frustration of receiving a pager notification for an urgent search, miles from home, necessitating a frantic search for a phone box and a “hightail it away back up to the council again,” is remembered with a wry fondness.

Evolution, Adaptation

The journey from those manual, often combative, days to today’s seamless digital operations is a testament to OneSearch’s relentless pursuit of efficiency and quality.

“It’s just amazing to think where we are now in terms of how we operate,” Carol reflects. “Everything is at our fingertips.” The shift from fax machines with queues of people waiting, to instant digital communication with road agents, dramatically cut turnaround times.

Caroline, from her finance perspective, saw this evolution in how OneSearch dealt with councils. “a lot [of the Local Authorities] were very, very resistant to change,” she notes, regarding the move away from cheques to online payments and invoices. COVID-19 ironically became a catalyst for some of these changes, forcing councils to embrace digital access that many have since maintained.

OneSearch’s foresight in adopting a unique model early on – collecting CON29 data in-house – proved prescient. This proactive approach positioned them perfectly for the era of upfront data. Liz recounts how digitalising Local Land Charge registers, once a “pipe dream,” is now a reality. “I’d like to think that we were forward thinking that we just foresaw that rather than just being lucky,” Carol adds.

Resilience: Bouncing Back from the Unimaginable

OneSearch’s 30-year journey isn’t just one of growth; it’s one of profound resilience. Caroline highlights the company’s ability to navigate immense challenges: “We’ve had the banking crash, we’ve had the removal of HIPs overnight, and the business is still here to tell the tale.”

Then there was the fire. An actual fire in the roof of the building. Liz received the call at 4AM, but by lunchtime, thanks to a well-rehearsed disaster recovery plan, OneSearch was “up and running and producing searches again.” Carol remembers competitors even reaching out to offer support during that time, a testament to the industry’s solidarity. The rapid pivot to remote work during the COVID-19 lockdown, with business “not even impacted whatsoever,” further cemented OneSearch’s adaptability.

The Unchanging Core: People and Partnership

Despite all the technological leaps and market upheavals, one thing has remained constant: OneSearch’s unwavering commitment to its people and its customers.

For customers, this translates into a unique service model. Carol, from her time as customer services manager, insists: “We don’t want to be perceived as a call centre. We’re there as a partner and as a support for our customers, so we want to build that relationship.” This personalised support means customer service staff “know exactly who they’re speaking to,” building trust that goes “a long way as to how the business continues to grow.” Even with urgent requests, OneSearch now offers solutions like Express searches and leverages long-standing relationships with councils for favours, ensuring clients get the help they need. The preference for communication may have shifted to email for busy solicitors, but the underlying dedication to direct, helpful conversation remains.

Caroline summarises the incredible journey: “It amazes me the actual resilience of the company… We’ve seen so many bad things happen, but we’ve always bounced back. We’ve always managed to work our way through.”

Now it’s 2025, and OneSearch stands as a beacon of stability and quality, a testament to three decades of adapting, innovating, and prioritising the human element. From commandeering photocopiers and fighting for appointments to instant digital delivery and personalised support, the journey is far from over, but the core commitment to solving the conveyancing puzzle for their partners, perfectly, remains as strong as ever.

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